The Midnight Ride, page 24
“It’s incredible,” she whispered.
The bell stood between two brick pillars, bordered on one side by a fence made of shoulder-high metal bars. The bell was much larger than she had imagined; suspended on an authentic-looking metal frame, it was as tall as she was, and though burnished by time and weather, it looked to be in near perfect condition. In fact, it looked—too perfect.
“The crack,” Hailey said. “There’s no crack.”
Nick turned away from the windows and stood next to her.
“Adrian said the Boston bell was different than the rest. I guess that’s what he meant. They didn’t add the crack. So, it’s not a perfect replica.”
“Actually, it is. A perfect replica of the bell as it was cast, before it was rung.”
She unslung her backpack, reached inside, and retrieved the golden box containing the clapper from the Constitution.
“The Liberty Bell was rung many times over almost a century—and it never sounded right. Maybe because it was never rung in the way that it was intended. A part of it was missing.”
She opened the box and lifted out the clapper, then placed the box back into her backpack. The clapper was heavy in her hands, made of what appeared to be the same bronze as the bell.
She crossed the courtyard to the metal fence. She gave a cursory glance to the plaque hanging halfway up the metal bars, describing the bell and how it had arrived in Boston; then she moved around where the fence met one of the brick pillars, and she was right up next to the bell itself.
She dropped to her knees and peered underneath. To her surprise, there was no clapper inside, just the setting where one should have been attached. She wondered if all the replica bells had come this way, or if the Boston clapper had been removed at some point in the past seventy years. Perhaps people had gotten tired of listening to what had been described as a noxious sound.
It took Hailey a few minutes to attach the clapper from the Constitution to the setting. By the time she stepped back, there were beads of perspiration on the back of her neck, making the breeze shifting over Beacon Hill feel like fingers of ice against her skin.
“Ready?” she asked.
And then she reached beneath the bell, took the clapper in her hand, and gave it a hard swing toward the bell’s bronze interior wall.
The sound hit her like a solid wave, and she rocked back on her heels. The tone was deep and strange and intense, riding right into her bones. Her stomach felt like it was dropping out, and she gasped—she’d never heard anything like it before.
Metal against metal, but something else, something beyond what her ears alone could detect, something that seemed to make the very cells in her body start to vibrate. She looked back at Nick, and his face had gone completely pale, his eyes like saucers. She turned back toward the bell; the clapper had traveled back to the other side of the bronze interior, and a second tone joined the first—the strange noise growing and growing, deeper and more powerful, disturbingly so, riding right through every inch of her body—
“Hailey, look!”
She whirled back around toward Nick. He had his hand out, and in his open palm, she saw he was holding the three remaining bullets that went with Adrian’s flintlock pistol. Except, they didn’t look right at all, because they weren’t dark gray lead anymore. They were glowing, shining even in the dim light—
They had turned to gold.
“This isn’t possible,” Nick whispered.
But Hailey knew he was wrong. It wasn’t just possible, it was real, it was happening. It was—
It wasn’t. Because suddenly the three bullets darkened against Nick’s palm, and a second later, they’d returned to their original state. Cold, unremarkable lead. The tone from the bell was still echoing around them, but the feeling Hailey had felt just a moment before—the intensity, the internal, almost cellular vibration—was gone.
“They were gold,” Hailey said. “For a second, they were gold. But it didn’t last. It wasn’t permanent—”
A sudden rending sound interrupted her midsentence, and Hailey turned back toward the bell. She saw, in awe, the crack as it appeared, working its way down the front of the bronze, all the way to the bottom. The bell was fracturing right in front of her. And as it did, the tone changed even more, bending toward something dull, unpleasant.
Hailey took another step back. And then she realized, there were other noises beyond the sound of the bell. It took a moment to recognize that they were sirens.
“The police are on their way back,” Nick said. “We have to go.”
The clapper was slowing now, in its arc within the bell, and the tone, unpleasant as it was, grew softer as the sirens grew louder. Hailey was trying to understand what had just happened. Revere’s equation—the sound curve he’d molded into the eagle’s wings—had been made real, translated by the Liberty Bell. The secret, holy grail of alchemy, the philosopher’s stone, that could transform lead to gold—but it had only been a temporary effect. It hadn’t transformed the lead—it had only momentarily rearranged it.
She shook her head. It didn’t make sense.
The box in her backpack that had held the clapper was made of gold. The note that had been inside the box along with the clapper had read: From she who made the box. Hailey had thought the note had referred to the Liberty Bell itself. But she wondered—what if it didn’t?
What if the bell wasn’t the end of Revere’s alchemical inquiry?
“A mathematical proof,” she whispered.
“What?” Nick asked.
He was staring down at the lead bullets in his hand. He looked bewildered. Something incredible had happened, they had gotten so close to something immensely powerful. But then, just like that, it had slipped away.
“In math, a proof is an argument that shows the undeniable truth of a theory,” Hailey continued. “Revere’s bells were experiments. The Liberty Bell, his true, final bell, was his proof; what he was trying to do was indeed possible. But the Liberty Bell didn’t make that golden box. Something, or someone, else did.”
“Revere’s philosopher’s stone—” Nick started.
“It’s still out there.”
Nick’s hand closed over the bullets. Then he looked at her in a way she hadn’t seen before. Maybe it was because they had come so close, or because he’d seen the unthinkable, if only for a moment. But something had definitely changed. Before, he’d told her that everyone was in this to get paid. For the first time for Nick, she believed, that was no longer true.
“This isn’t over,” he said.
Hailey retrieved her backpack and slid past him. Considering they’d just climbed the State House itself, getting out of the courtyard and over the fence surrounding the front facade of the building wouldn’t be difficult. But beyond that—Hailey wasn’t yet sure.
Even so, as she led Nick down the stone steps toward the fence, Beacon Street, and the Boston Common beyond, she realized she was smiling. She and Nick had just witnessed something earth-shattering, and incredibly powerful; a mechanism that, however briefly, could transform lead into gold. But they also had evidence—the box in her backpack—that somewhere, there was something even more powerful and permanent waiting for them. Paul Revere had started this journey more than two hundred years ago, but now Hailey felt certain she was hot on his trail.
“I thought the Liberty Bell was the solution to Revere’s puzzle,” she said, as they moved. “The culmination of his work. But I was wrong.”
The bell wasn’t the solution to the puzzle.
It was only the first piece.
Epilogue
Five miles away, Curt Anderson limped deliberately down the long private dock toward the figure standing at the far end, backlit by the sun rising up from beyond the harbor. Curt’s right leg throbbed with pain as the dock swayed with the water that crashed and cavorted against the wooden pylons holding it up, but Curt refused to acknowledge the pain, his long, taut muscles reacting instinctively to keep his balance perfect, his motion pure. Along with the leg, which might very well have been broken, two of his ribs were undoubtedly bruised. Every breath was a challenge, but Curt knew, in this moment, that his wounds were irrelevant. Given time, they would heal. In this moment, the fact that he had failed was much more of an existential threat; so despite the pain, he didn’t walk so much as glide, his joints perfectly tuned to overcome the damage by a near lifetime of physical training.
But even with all that he had been through at the State House, and despite his education, the years he’d spent plying his unique profession—something about the man at the end of the dock still filled him with trepidation.
Strange; as Curt moved closer, he could make out the man’s features, and there was nothing unusual or terrifying about them. Middle-aged, handsome, thin but not gaunt, with short hair slightly silver at the edges, and maybe just the hint of a scar above his left eye. If anything, the man looked like a banker, or someone who started companies in Silicon Valley. There was nothing inherently frightening about him.
But as Curt stopped a few feet in front of the man, bowing slightly, he could feel the palpable surge in the nerves of his spine, overcoming the needles ricocheting out of his ribs. All of his senses were going off, warning him, and it took much of his energy just to push the feelings away.
“Mr. Arthur,” Curt finally said, when he’d regained his composure. “I have unfortunate news to report.”
The man sighed. Curt could see, behind him, the leather-lined tender tied to the end of the dock, piloted by a sailor in a crisp gray uniform. The exterior of the tender was sleek and mostly pitch-black fiberglass, without markings or numbers. The interior was likewise dark, the leather imported and expensive. Curt knew that the tender was one of the fastest of its kind, ridiculously expensive, with a price running into the millions. But it was nothing compared to the three-hundred-foot yacht it served, anchored just beyond the harbor.
Curt had been on the yacht once before, when he’d first been hired to shadow Patricia. The yacht was something quite incredible: two helicopter pads, multiple swimming pools, an indoor theater, and a lower level that could only be described as an art museum, filled with Picassos, Van Goghs, and probably now, at least one Vermeer. The yacht flew a flag of a small European country, but the family that owned it had a different provenance, one shrouded in mystery. Even Curt didn’t know their full history. And he didn’t intend to research the matter. There were certain stones you did not turn over, no matter how curious you were.
“Both Patricia and I failed,” Curt started, not mincing words, but Mr. Arthur stopped him with a wave of his hand.
“It doesn’t matter. There’s a new thread to pull, Mr. Emerson. A promising thread.”
Curt instinctively recoiled as Mr. Arthur reached into his jacket pocket, then relaxed as the man retrieved a small photograph, and handed it across to him.
Curt looked down at the picture. It was of an engraving; one he’d never seen before. The signature at the bottom of the engraving was instantly familiar: Paul Revere. Revere was in the image on the engraving as well, but he wasn’t alone. A second man was there with him. Heavyset, mostly bald but with curly, longish hair at the sides—and circular, metal-framed spectacles resting on the ridge of his nose. The two men were standing in what looked to be a workshop, with a table between them. On the table was what appeared to be an eagle, made of what might have been solid gold. But strangely, the eagle wasn’t the focal point of the engraving. The focal point was something else, an object hanging between the men, above the table.
A kite. With what appeared to be a key, dangling from its tail.
Mr. Arthur held out his hand, and Curt handed him back the photograph. Then Arthur turned toward the tender, beckoning Curt to follow.
“We’ll be in Philadelphia by the morning,” he said.
So, Curt realized, he would be making the trip down the coast after all.
He and Patricia had failed, but the hunt wasn’t over.
In fact, it was about to begin all over again.
Acknowledgments
When the Boston Globe first approached me—at the height of the pandemic—with the wild idea of me writing a serialized novella to run, daily, over a period of two weeks in the pages of my hometown newspaper, I was both excited and terrified. I’d always wanted to do this sort of book—a modern thrill ride built around an epic-scale mystery going back centuries into real history—but the thought of crafting a chapter a day for a waiting audience of readers seemed more than a little ambitious. Thankfully, a delusional sense of adventure won out over reason; The Mechanic, which has now evolved into a full-size novel, The Midnight Ride, ended up being one of the best writing experiences of my career. For this, I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to the wonderful readers of the Globe all over New England and around the country, who followed me daily on what turned out to be only the beginning of an incredible journey.
Likewise, immense thanks to the brilliant Linda Pizzuti Henry and the dedicated Brian McGrory for taking a risk on something like this, for all the right reasons. Special thanks to Mark Morrow at the Globe for helping shape the chapters that appeared in the newspaper and Heather Hopp-Bruce for the amazing artwork that appeared with each installment.
Turning The Mechanic into a full-size thriller was a labor of love, which I could not have achieved without the incredible help and genius of my editor, Wes Miller; I’m very lucky to be working with someone as skilled as Wes, and the entire team at Hachette, including Autumn Oliver and Andy Dodds. I’m also thankful for the wonderful help from our team at Amblin Partners, Jeb Brody and John Buderwitz; can’t wait to see these characters on the big screen.
As usual, immense thanks to my incredible agents, Eric Simonoff at WME and Matt Snyder at CAA. And to my family, Tonya, Asher, Arya, Bagel, and Bugsy, who were around for most of it—I couldn’t do this without you. The Midnight Ride opens a new chapter for me, and I can’t wait to see where this adventure leads.
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About the Author
BEN MEZRICH is the New York Times bestselling author of The Accidental Billionaires (adapted by Aaron Sorkin into the David Fincher film The Social Network), Bringing Down the House (adapted into the #1 box office hit film 21), The Antisocial Network, and several other bestselling nonfiction books. His books have sold over six million copies worldwide.
Also by Ben Mezrich
The Antisocial Network
Bitcoin Billionaires
Woolly
The 37th Parallel
Once Upon a Time in Russia
Straight Flush
The Accidental Billionaires
Rigged
Busting Vegas
Ugly Americans
Bringing Down the House
Ben Mezrich, The Midnight Ride
