William Monk 15 - Dark Assassin

set of steps down to the water. A boat was waiting for them, and almost immediately the darkness swallowed them.
    Monk stood alone, shifting from foot to foot, desperately searching the darkness for Orme. Where the devil was he? There were barges moving upstream, their riding lights glittering. An ice-cold wind was whining among the broken pier stakes.
    There was a noise behind him. He spun around. A man stood ten feet away. He had not even heard him coming; the slurp of the water masked his footsteps. Monk had no weapon, and his back was to the river.
    A boat scraped against the steps. He strode over and saw several men in it—randan, police formation. There was room for two more, which would be cramped although not dangerous. Orme was in the stern. Monk could not see his face, but he recognized the way he stood, outlined solid black against the shifting, dimly reflecting surface of the water.
    Monk went down the steps as fast as he could, his feet slithering on the wet, slime-coated stone. Orme put out his hand and steadied him as he all but pitched forward on the last step. He landed clumsily in the boat and scrambled to take one of the seats. The next moment his hands closed over an oar and he made ready to throw his weight against it on the order.
    Butterworth came down the steps, boarded, and crouched in the stern. The word was given, and they pulled out into the stream. They heaved hard to catch up with the thieves’ boat.
    No one spoke; each man was listening to the beat of the oars. In the stern, Orme was straining to see ahead and to steady them against the wash of barges going up- or downstream and to avoid any anchored boats waiting to unload on the wharves at daylight.
    Where were they going? Monk guessed Jacob’s Island. He tried to distinguish through the gloom the chaotic shapes of the shore. There were cranes black against the skyline, and the masts of a few ships. There was a break in the roofs, signaling the inlet to a dock, then more warehouses again, this time jagged, some open to the sky, walls askew as they sank into the mud. He was right—Jacob’s Island.
    Ten minutes later they were all on the soggy, rubble-strewn shore, creeping forward a few inches at a time, feet testing the ground for litter, traps where the planking had rotted and given way under the weight and broken timbers protruded through. Somewhere ahead of them the thieves were gathering; from the thefts they had counted ten.
    Monk had a cutlass in his hand, given him by Orme. The weight of it was unfamiliar but deeply reassuring. Please God, he would know how to use it if he should have to.
    They continued forward, ten river police surrounding an unknown number of thieves, and perhaps their receivers as well. They were inside the first buildings now, the remnants of abandoned warehouses, cellars already flooded. The sour stench of tidal mud and sewage, refuse, and dead rats was thick in the throat. Everything seemed to be moving, dripping, creaking, as if the whole edifice were slipping lower into the ooze, drowning inch by inch.
    A rat scuttled by, its feet scraping on the boards. Then it plopped into a puddle of water, and the empty sounds of the night closed in again. There was no living slap of the tide here, only the groan of timber settling and breaking and sagging lower.
    There were voices ahead, and lights. Monk, cutlass ready, stood half behind a doorway and watched. He could see the squat shapes of the men, now no more than humps, a deepening of the shadows, but the man with the ivory carving was there.
    He froze, barely breathing. He did not catch the words they said, but flight actions were plain. They were dividing the spoils of the day. His stomach knotted at the sight of how much they had. It was far more than he had known about.
    He waited. Orme was somewhere to the left of him, Butterworth to the right; Jones and the others had gone around behind the chairs to encircle them.
    The thieves were arguing over how to sell the ivory carving. It seemed to go on interminably. There were nine of them, not ten. Monk must have miscounted earlier. He was cold to the bone, his feet numb, his teeth chattering. The odds were against them. But the statue was what mattered; above all he must get that back, that and the Fat Man.
    The stench of the mud almost choked him.
    Why didn’t they agree with the obvious and take the carving to the Fat Man? He was the king of the opulent receivers. He would give them the best price for