Swamped

"My predecessor had a rather cynical way of putting it," Long says. "He told me, 'Trust is money, and you can't spend that much of it.' His guiding principle, you might say, was that if you couldn't spare the trust, you looked for another kind of leverage."

"That's a rather mercenary take on things," you say.

"It certainly was under Captain Burgundy," Rider agrees. "Fortunately, Long here was a bright enough lad to notice the difference between negotiations that went well and negotiations that didn't."

"The trick was realizing it was a two-way street," Long continues. "Imagine, if you will, that there are three prisoners on each side, and each of you can release only one at a time. When two prisoners are released, the side that gives up theirs first loses their leverage. Both sides realize this, and so the situation grows more tense at that point."

"But, if there's another point of leverage, then there's less risk in releasing your last prisoner," Rider says. "That was what Long realized - that by keeping both sides convinced they had some form of power over the other, it was a lot easier to get them to give up other things. So long as that balance was maintained."

You think about this.

"We've got two prisoners. The kidnapper's got one. So we can give one away without losing anything. But then the kidnapper's got every reason to hold off, because they can't be sure we'll release the other prisoner once Simone's back with us. So... we've got to give them something else to hold over us to avoid that?"

"We could offer something valuable, but expendable, as a guarantee," Long says. "The arrangement would be that we hand it over, Simone is released, the other prisoner is released, and the object is returned to us. Of course, the kidnapper might take the object and run at that point, but at least we would have Simone back."

"And just what are we handing over?" Theodore asks. He doesn't sound happy. "I'm happy to give up anything I've got to guarantee Simone's safety, but it's not as if we've got a stockpile of gold. At best we could offer some research equipment, but most of it is too specialized to be of any interest to a kidnapper."

"It only has to be valuable to us," you say. "In fact, it might be even better if it's meaningless to the kidnapper. They're more likely to return it that way."

"Fair point. But I doubt we're dealing with a scientific genius. How are they going to know it's valuable to us? We'd have every reason to lie about that."

You take a moment to think about that. What can you offer, and how can you persuade the kidnapper of its value to you?