GR translation: negotiable skills

[Mike Jing]

V14.15-19, P14.33-37   Into the dossier it goes, and eventually the Firm,
in Their tireless search for negotiable skills, will summon him under
Whitehall, to observe him in his trances across the blue baize fields and
the terrible paper gaming, his eyes rolled back into his head reading old,
glyptic old graffiti on his own sockets. . . .

What does "negotiable" mean here?