Martha spoke. “Mr. Ward was trying to get into it, but he only had his driver’s license. I was explaining our policy…”
“I think one ID will be enough for Mike.”
“Maybe I should check with Mr. Halmin,” Martha said, still unsure if she was doing the right thing.
“No, he’ll just say the same thing. You don’t have to be a stickler for the rules if you know the customer.” Heather winked at Kevin.
“Thanks,” he said. “You just saved my life.”
“Can you remember my name now?” Heather said.
“I don’t think that’ll be a problem.”
“Then maybe I’ll see you around.”
She started across the lobby, glancing back as she did.
Kevin’s knees stopped shaking now that he had passed inspection. Martha led him to the vault, where she looked through a box of cards, removed one, and handed it to Kevin. On line one, it had Michael Ward’s signature and the date the box was leased. Line two was blank, meaning Ward had never reopened the box.
Kevin tried to nonchalantly sign and date the card. He had practiced the signature for two hours yesterday. As he returned the card to Martha, he thought the resemblance to the original was close enough. Martha replaced the card after a thorough inspection.
Ward’s box was one of the larger ones, about 10 inches across and 4 inches high. Kevin gave Martha the key, and she used it to remove the long box from its sheath. By the way she handled it, it looked fairly light, which he confirmed when she gave it to him. It rattled a little as he took it along with the key.
“Would you like a private booth?”
“Please.”
Once inside the booth, Kevin took a deep breath and lifted the lid.
At the front of the box lay an 8mm camcorder videotape, the kind they used in the lab to record experiments. He took it out. It had been rewound to the beginning. The label on the tape said “NV117.” He slipped the tape into his pocket.
Kevin tilted the box toward him, and a laboratory notebook slid to the front. He reached into the covered area at the back of the box, but nothing else was in it.
He carefully lifted the notebook out and turned it over. Three words were handwritten on the front cover. In all capital letters were the words “THE ADAMAS BLUEPRINT.” It was an odd title for a lab book.
He opened it. The front page looked as if it had been torn out. A date in June was printed at the top of the second page. The first line started with “Adamas — Greek for an impenetrably hard stone. To whom it may concern: Adamas is also the name of the process I’ve described in this notebook. Since you are reading this notebook…”
Kevin quickly read the next few paragraphs, stopping to reread every sentence to make sure he had understood it correctly, not wanting to believe it. He skipped to the pages detailing the technical aspects of the process. As he read the setup and methodology section, the only words running through his mind were “Holy shit!” Then he saw the data. After five minutes, he was almost convinced. Adamas probably worked.
Now he fully understood the danger they were in. The people that were after them would stop at nothing to get this notebook and kill them both for even knowing of its existence.
He shut the notebook, tucked it under his arm, and left the booth.
He passed Martha, who said, “Is that all, Mr. Ward?”
Kevin didn’t stop, but mumbled his thanks as he strode by her and out the bank exit.
He yanked the Honda’s door open. As he jumped into the car, Erica said, “There you are. I was beginning to get worried.”
“Let’s get out of here,” was the only thing he said.
As Erica drove, Kevin remained silent, turning over their next move in his mind.
“Okay. I can’t stand it anymore,” she said. “What did you find? You were in there for a long time. I thought they had spotted the fake license.”
“No. I had a little problem, but I got into the box.” He showed her the notebook, and she glanced at the cover.
“What’s Adamas?”
“You may not believe it. I’m not sure I believe it myself yet.”
“What is it? The formula for Coke?”
“No,” Kevin said, staring at the notebook. “But it’s probably worth just as much. It’s a blueprint, just like the title says. It has schematics, experimental data, methodology, everything.”
“A blueprint? For what?”
“For making diamonds.”
CHAPTER 16
Clayton Tarnwell burst through the left door of the laboratory, almost knocking over a technician carrying samples the other direction. The technician first cursed at him for using the wrong door, and then when he saw who it was, began to apologize profusely. Tarnwell kept walking as if the man weren’t even there.
Following him was his mousy, balding chief financial officer, Milton Senders, still garbed in a plaid shirt and hiking boots, dabbing the top of his perspiring head with a handkerchief. The plane had been late in arriving, and he had raced over to the office without changing when he’d gotten his messages at home. He too didn’t give a second glance at the sputtering technician. He was too busy doing his own sputtering.
“I…I’m sorry, Clay. There’s no excuse. This should never have happened. ZurBank should have called…”
“It’s too late for that, Senders. You’re not going to weasel your way out of this. You gave me your word that Ward had no way of getting the money out.” Tarnwell crashed through another door.
“But he couldn’t have if those assholes at ZurBank hadn’t been so stupid. The bank had specific instructions to notify us before making any transactions over $10,000 involving the account. That would give us time to find out what he was up to. If he withdrew less than that, he’d have some spending money to play with, and he wouldn’t get suspicious. It should have been foolproof.”
“Then what happened? Ten million dollars didn’t just evaporate.” Tarnwell already had a headache, and this fool was just making it worse. Normally, four hours of sleep was enough for him, but he’d been up since Saturday following the operation to capture the Hamilton kid and getting ready to secure the loan to buy Forrestal Chemical. The loan talks with First Texas had gone smoothly, and the buyout was practically a done deal. The Forrestal board had the contract in front of them, and Tarnwell expected them to sign it any minute. He had no doubt they would; they’d never get a better deal than $20 a share for a company that was currently trading at $12 a share.
“I talked to Hermann Schultz at ZurBank after I finished the work on the Forrestal contract,” Senders said. “He faxed the detailed statements. The account isn’t empty. There’s about $100,000 left, probably so we wouldn’t know he closed the account. Apparently on Friday he tried to make a withdrawal of $15,000. When the bank told him it would take several hours to complete the transaction, Ward changed his mind and withdrew $9000 instead. ZurBank didn’t notify us since it was below the $10,000 limit.”
Tarnwell stopped at a third door, simply marked ‘Research’.
“What the hell are you getting at, Senders?”
“Beginning at 6:00 Friday morning Zurich time, Ward made 1100 withdrawals of $9000 each.”
“What! How?”
“Electronically. He must have called the bank for the information on how to do it. It’s fairly simple to do over the computer when you have a password.”
“1100 withdrawals in one morning?”
“The computer registered one withdrawal every thirty seconds. It took about nine hours. He must have written a special program to do it.”
“Are you telling me that there was no cap on the amount that could be withdrawn?”
“We saw no need for it. You said you’d be willing to give up a few minor withdrawals to give Ward the illusion of a real account. And we had a helluva time getting ZurBank to help us as much as they did. There was no way we were going to get them to limit the total amount Ward could withdraw…”