the truth. One day the DAS and the police stopped the truck outside Medellín. They told the driver that everything was set; he just had to call the boss and tell him that he had to pay a bribe for the truck to continue. As Pablo told me later, he was not surprised when he got the phone call, as this was often the way business was done in Colombia. But when he and Gustavo showed up at the designated meeting place they were arrested.

I didn’t learn about this until the next day. I was in the city of Manizales meeting with the coaching staff of the national bicycling team, preparing for a speech I was to give that evening, when I saw the police picture of Pablo on the front page of the newspaper. I was stunned; I knew he was doing contraband, but not drugs. My first fear was what this would do to my own position with the team. I was worried I would be fired. But then I realized that no one at this meeting knew Pablo was my brother. I decided to be cool. I’d give my speech and then I would try to help.

I called my mother, who had been crying for hours. Remember, we had no cell phones then and she had not been able to find me. I told her I knew nothing about it, but that certainly I would do whatever I could to help my brother.

I tried to give my speech that night, but it was impossible. I apologized and said I was feeling sick and had to leave. The drive from Manizales to Medellín took about eight hours. I was with a good friend who eventually would work for Pablo in the cartel. We were driving a Dodge truck. I drove for several hours, then allowed my friend to take over. Today Colombia has nice highways, but at that time it was mostly narrow old roads. I sat back in the passenger seat and began thinking about what I would have to do right away. As soon as I got back to Medellín I had to make sure our financial records were the way we wanted them to be. The government was not going to check the source of Pablo’s funds, but they might want to see how much he had earned from drug deals. I had to make sure that all the money he had in the banks was based on recent real estate transactions.

It was 3:30 in the morning and we were the only car on the road. I saw that we were running short of fuel and began looking around for a gas station. As I did I saw a man dressed in black, with a round black hat on his head, standing by the side of the road. To me, he looked like a priest. I thought that was very strange: What was a priest doing standing alone on the road in the middle of the night? As we came close to him my friend didn’t even slow down. “Hey,” I practically yelled at him, “stop the car! Stop the car!”

We raced right past the man. I saw his face looking at me. I said to my friend, “Man, I’m telling you to stop the freaking car!” Then I turned around and looked back—and the man was gone. He had disappeared.

A little while later we drove past an open gas station—and again he refused to stop. He didn’t stop until we finally ran out of gas. I was furious with him. “What’s the matter with you? Why didn’t you stop to pick up that guy? I told you to stop at the gas station.”

He looked at me like I was crazy. “What are you talking about? You never told me to stop. There was no guy on the road.”

I got goose bumps. Even now when I think about it my body goes cold. I know what I saw that night. And more important, that was only the first time I would see the priest. And I would learn to understand what it meant when I saw him.

We had to walk back to the gas station but eventually we got home. I saw Pablo a day later at the Itagüi prison, one of the toughest jails in Medellín. He didn’t want to talk about his situation, just telling me that he would take care of it. He spent eight days there, then paid someone to arrange