information, any effort on their part toward a goal that
serves you. And all negotiation, done well, should be an
information-gathering process that vests your counterpart in
an outcome that serves you.
Worst of all, the bad guys know that they have just given
you something—a proof of life—which triggers this whole
human reciprocity gene. Whether we like to recognize it or
not, a universal rule of human nature, across all cultures, is
that when somebody gives you something, they expect
something in return. And they won’t give anything else until
you pay them back.
Now, we didn’t want to trigger this whole reciprocity
thing because we didn’t want to give anything. So what
happened? All of our conversations became these paralyzed
confrontations between two parties who wanted to extract
something from each other but didn’t want to give. We
didn’t communicate, out of pride and fear.
That’s why we failed, while numbskulls like this crooked
Philippine politician just stumbled in and got what we so
desperately needed. That is, communication without
reciprocity. I sat back and wondered to myself, How the hell
do we do that?
SUSPEND UNBELIEF
While I was racking my brains over how this sleazy
politician managed to get Martin Burnham on the phone
while we never could, FBI Pittsburgh had a kidnapping
case.