A Green Beret's True Story of His Jack Lawson with Sully de Fontaine

J heard
3
Unjust Rumor
you were involved with the assassination of Patrice Lumumba
in the Congo.” The words tumbled out of my mouth before
I could check my impulse to speak.
They were directed to the stocky man with graying hair and telltale
limp with whom I had just shaken hands and who’d taken the chair next
to me at the dining table. He had been given many cover names and
identifications over the years, but his real name was Sully de Fontaine.
In spite of his neatly tailored dark gray pinstripe suit, his military
bearing betrayed him amid the gamblers and business people haunting
the chic Center Stage Café in Las Vegas that day in September of
2000. This aging man looked as fit as an eighteen year old just out of
Fort Benning Airborne School, the legendary training post in Georgia
that he had conquered decades earlier. He may as well have been in his
Army uniform, with his full-bird colonel’s insignia and his many
medals, the hardware that comes with years of discipline of military
life that had forever branded him with this revealing air.
My question was raw and out of place. But Sully didn’t waiver, he
continued calmly unfolding his cloth napkin and preparing for the
meal that would soon be in front of him as if the question hadn’t been
asked.