Mark was able to see clearly from the beginning that no condition was ever going to change in a way that would exonerate his son. There was no solution in the courts. He continued to think about his son’s predicament for a couple of years. When his son came up with the idea of assembling a team of specialists from within the prison system and breaking out, he experienced one of the few moments of pride in his son that he had ever felt. Mark Duquesne began to work on the idea.

His first act was to get to know a high-ranking official in the Federal Bureau of Prisons named Mundt. The Duquesne companies, and Mark Duquesne himself, had friendly and mutually beneficial relationships with many government officials, including appointees to the commissions that regulated mining, timber, trade, domestic commerce, pharmaceuticals, energy production, banking, and communication. He cultivated Pentagon officials, particularly those who had influence over purchasing and logistics. But he was especially welcoming to congressmen, who were in the regrettable predicament of having to raise the millions of dollars it took to run for office every two years. He often invited these people to parties, held dinners for them, even took them on trips. He added Mr. Mundt to the guest list for a few parties where he could meet people who impressed him.

After a time Mundt was included in some events where guests were provided with theme gifts—pheasant hunts where the guests were expected to keep the expensive shotguns they used, trips on a yacht to a company-owned resort where other guests included some unusually attractive younger women with foreign accents who were more appreciative and playful with older men than American women ever seemed to be. This phenomenon was explained by the suggestion that foreign women were simply less spoiled, but Mr. Duquesne was aware that they needed to be spoiled as much as anyone to ensure both receptivity in the present and loss of memory in the future. If Mr. Mundt ever wondered whether he was behaving recklessly, he could simply look to his right and his left and see men with much more to lose than he had.

During this period of a year or more, Mark Duquesne was waiting for his son’s list. When it came, it was encrypted in a code the family had commissioned more than two hundred years earlier for situations when one of them was held for ransom or doing business in an unfriendly country where he didn’t want to be understood. There were eleven names and the prisons where they were incarcerated. Paul had collected them patiently using the prison-to-prison system of gossip and rumors. He asked that he and the other eleven all be transferred from the prisons where they were to the penitentiary in Weldonville, Colorado.