But Hailey’s resolve had only grown stronger. She had come too far to turn back, and she had made it clear—she was going forward, with or without him.

And so here she was, on her back on the deck of the USS Constitution, on the verge of what could be a history-changing discovery, a feat that made card counting look like a petty child’s trick.

She rose from the deck, taking the backpack with her. She’d actually been on the Constitution before, during her freshman year at MIT, at one of those social mixers she’d been unable to avoid. Back then, so early in her grift, and her carefully layered new identity, she’d still been concerned about appearances.

A glance ahead told her Nick’s piloting of the skiff had been on target; they were very near the stern of the ship. The three masts rose up behind her to dizzying heights—the main mast, to 175 feet—but ahead the deck sloped only slightly upward, ending in a railing that seemed part of the current refitting. Planks from the railing had been removed, beyond which Hailey could see the water, a good forty-foot drop below.

She started forward toward that gap in the railing. Nick followed, his head swiveling to take in the ornate woodworking on either side, the elegance and precision of the ship around them. Usually, visitors to the Constitution started in the museum dedicated to the ship on the pier, learning how it had been built in 1794 in a shipyard in the North End—just blocks from Paul Revere’s home—and launched in 1797. How the ship had bested numerous pirates off the Barbary Coast, before it had made its name in the great battles of the War of 1812.

Almost at the stern and the break in the railing, Hailey noticed that a row of three of the ship’s cannons had been moved up onto the deck from the cannon room below; probably part of the retrofitting, they were huge beasts, squat and heavy in the darkness. All three were on wheeled frames, their barrels facing out toward the ocean. Nick was now eyeing the cannons as well.

“Fake, I assume?” he said. “Nobody’s going to use them to sink our skiff on our way out of here, if we manage to find this bell?”

“The whole ship has been refitted and restored numerous times over the years. The cannons, too. Most were recast, iron dummies, not meant to be used. But a couple are active. They don’t fire cannonballs. They’ve been hollowed out and retrofitted as .40-millimeter saluting guns. Packed with gunpowder and saluting shells. They make quite a blast. They fire them twice a day when this thing is up and running.”