Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It

his organs in Saudi Arabia.”
Within twenty-four hours, I’d been charged with heading
the negotiation from Quantico. Alastair’s girlfriend was too
nervous to handle the family side of the negotiation, and his
mother, who lived in the Philippines, just wanted to accept
any demand the kidnapper made.
But Alastair’s brother Aaron, in Manila, was different: he
just got the idea of negotiation and he accepted that Alastair
might die, which would make him a better and more
effective negotiator. Aaron and I set up an always-on phone
line and I became Aaron’s guru on the other side of the
world.
Through the kidnapper’s comments and demands, I saw
that he was experienced and patient. As a token of his
intentions, he offered to cut off one of Alastair’s ears and
send it to the family along with a video of him severing the
ear.
The demand for the daily payment was clearly a trick to
quickly drain the family of as much money as possible
while at the same time gauging their wealth. We had to
figure out who this guy was—Was he a lone operator or part
of a group? Did he plan on killing Alastair or not?—and we
had to do that before the family went broke. To get there,
we were going to have to engage the kidnapper in a
protracted negotiation. We were going to have to slow
everything down.
From Quantico, I loaded Aaron up with calibrated
questions. I instructed him to keep peppering the violent