Many of the facts about Joseacute; Beyaert's life are matters of public record: he was born in 1928 in Lens; he won an Olympic gold medal in the 1948 road race in Windsor Park; he enjoyed a lengthy sporting career and won many professional cycling races; he attained celebrity status in France, Africa and South America; and he was adopted by right-wing debunkers of Papillon as a more acceptable swashbuckler in French politics. The rest trafficker of weapons for the Resistance in Vichy France in the Second World War; his adventures in Colombia's emerald fields; diving for Fitzcarraldo's lost treasure in the piranha-infested Orinoco River; his execution of erstwhile business partners who double-crossed him while they were cutting timber in the rainforest; and his friendship with the emerald and cocaine billionaire Joseacute; Rodriacute;quez Gacha ('A good man,' he would say of the sadist and serial murderer, who orchestrated Pablo Escobar's terror in Colombia) is shrouded in mystery. Joseacute; Beyaert was an inveterate storyteller and mythmaker, and the hours of interviews he gave award-winning author Matt Rendell in the final months of his life contain many anecdotes, and jaw-dropping legend. His story is a Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid of our era that will shock and enthrall in equal measure.