Slayer by Stealth

By Wilton Hazzard

"Slayer by Stealth" is an absorbing work with several amusing characters and a gripping storyline. This page-turning novel will keep the readers hooked till the end.
Excerpt
"THE CLOCK IN the town of Laurenco Marques was just striking midnight at the moment Dan Turcan stepped from the gloom of the arches flanking the Avenida Aquila and hurried toward the plaza. He gained the shadow of the palmetto trees, then came to an abrupt halt, looking keenly about him. Someone had been shadowing him up from the wharf but there was no sign of him now. Reassured, he made his way more leisurely toward the Governor's residence through the Vasco da Gama gardens."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Good Press
• Release date: Apr 10, 2021
• ISBN: 4064066465766

Book preview

Wilton Hazzard

Slayer by Stealth

Published by Good Press, 2022

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EAN 4064066465766

Table of Contents

Cover

Titlepage

Text

Chapter One

THE CLOCK IN the town of Laurenco Marques was just striking midnight at the moment Dan Turcan stepped from the gloom of the arches flanking the Avenida Aquila and hurried toward the plaza. He gained the shadow of the palmetto trees, then came to an abrupt halt, looking keenly about him. Someone had been shadowing him up from the wharf but there was no sign of him now. Reassured, he made his way more leisurely toward the Governor's residence through the Vasco da Gama gardens.

The familiar odors of the jungle—the pleasant ones, were all around him. The heavy sweetness of orchids; of the dusty hibiscus and the sharper fragrance of the red clover blossom. Below the town, with its flat-roofed, white and pink-washed houses, the waters of the bay shone like dull gold under the rusting muzzles of the old fort's cannon—guns that once had bloomed Portugal's maritime supremacy in the ears of the world and the claim to the riches of the fever-sodden hinterland beyond the town.

But times had changed. Portuguese authority was weak even on the coast. Cetshwayo's impis were flashing along the borders. White renegades and black upstarts clutched at rich territories laid waste by massacre. In the chancellories of Europe calculating eyes studied the map of Africa, and in Africa, men slept with a hand on their rifles. Da Cunha, governor of Mozambique, watched uneasily the rapid growth of colonies and republics on his long, vague frontier.

It was like Da Cunha, Turcan thought, to call him to a secret conference at midnight. Everything he did, he did secretly. It was not that he was unscrupulous, he had an hidalgo's pride in blood and honor. It was just consciousness of his country's weakness that made him prefer intrigue where an overt move would provoke a powerful rival. Nor was he entirely wrong in this case, Turcan conceded. If there was a treaty to be signed with a powerful chief, Turcan, the supposedly disinterested American, the poor white hunter, could act for his adopted country without causing so much as the lifting of a political eyebrow. Yes, da Cunha had his points, and that he paid well was not the least of them in Turcan's opinion.

But it wasn't money that had brought him to Laurenco in answer to da Cunha's summons after two years of exile. He wanted to see Ines da Cunha again before she married the noble de Cabral. It would be opening an old wound. He should have ignored the summons, stayed away. But he was a sucker for punishment and—

Turcan lifted his head, a faint metallic sound, dissonant amid the pulsing rhythm of insect throats had reached his ears. He walked on for a few strides, then faced about quickly.

The leaves of an ilex bush bordering on the path rustled and quivered. No white man could have gone to cover so swiftly and silently unless, like Turcan, he had spent half his life in the jungle. The shadows were an invisible cloak for a black skin. Turcan was unarmed but he advanced on the bush, knowing that it was safer to force the black to attack or run.

Moonlight flashed on