Adrian’s lips turned down at the corners as he hurried his gait. He had no time for such foolishness. As good as the re-creation might be, it was all fantasy. The wharf had been constructed by professional set designers with Hollywood pedigrees. The panorama of the harbor was a projection, crafted by a cinematographer with a flair for the dramatic. The sounds were being pumped in through speakers hidden in the ceiling. It might have seemed like he was rushing through the crisp air of December 16, 1773, but it was actually the second week of May, and the air was crisp because some fool had set the air-conditioning much too high. The only thing linking Adrian to that fateful night—perhaps one of the most written about, taught, and referenced events in American history—was the time.

Adrian reached the end of the wharf, slowing a bit to let the two fugitives catch up. Even the thought of them just steps behind him made the skin at the back of his neck tingle in the most unpleasant way—but from the moment he’d decided to follow them when they’d come skittering out of the Bunker Hill Monument, instead of alerting the policemen he’d seen rushing up the steps when they’d first left him, he’d thrown his lot in with them, for better or worse.

In the end, it was all Charles’s fault. But once he’d seen what Hailey had revealed on the urn, and especially after he’d laid his eyes on Thomire—and Revere’s—eagle, he’d really had no choice. He was a scholar, and this was squarely, now, a scholarly endeavor. If his two “companions” were thieves—and clearly, they looked like thieves—there would be time to deal with that after the mystery had been solved.

Once the bedraggled pair were right behind him again, Adrian quickened his pace. “Griffin’s Wharf,” the sign hanging atop a suspiciously blank and blackened section of the set proclaimed, even though Adrian was well aware the actual location of that historical spot was now filled in and paved over, at the corner of Congress and Purchase streets a few blocks away. Then the three of them passed through an open doorway that led deeper into the museum.

If you could call it that. From the two ships parked outside—expert re-creations of the shipping schooners Eleanor and the Beaver—to the exhibits set within the sprawling complex that stretched along Congress Street, the Boston Tea Party Museum seemed more of an amusement park ride than a place you would go to study history.