CHAPTER 1
THE NEW RULES
I was intimidated.
I’d spent more than two decades in the FBI, including fifteen years negotiating hostage situations from New York to the Philippines and the Middle East, and I was on top of my game. At any given time, there are ten thousand FBI agents in the Bureau, but only one lead international kidnapping negotiator. That was me.
But I’d never experienced a hostage situation so tense, so personal.
“We’ve got your son, Voss. Give us one million dollars or he dies.”
Pause. Blink. Mindfully urge the heart rate back to normal.
Sure, I’d been in these types of situations before. Tons of them.
Money for lives. But not like this. Not with my son on the line. Not $1 million. And not against people with fancy degrees and a lifetime of negotiating expertise.
You see, the people across the table—my negotiating counterparts—were Harvard Law School negotiating professors.
I’d come up to Harvard to take a short executive negotiating course, to see if I could learn something from the business world’s approach.
It was supposed to be quiet and calm, a little professional development for an FBI guy trying to widen his horizons.
But when Robert Mnookin, the director of the Harvard Negotiation Research Project, learned I was on campus, he invited me to his office for a coffee. Just to chat, he said.
I was honored. And scared. Mnookin is an impressive guy whom I’d followed for years: not only is he a Harvard law professor, he’s