BOOK REVIEW: Behind The Trigger
By Yariv Inbar/Genera Ventures
Reviewed by: Kenneth Dekleva
The Reviewer — Dr. Kenneth Dekleva served as a Regional Medical Officer/Psychiatrist with the U.S. Dept. of State from 2002-2016, and is Professor of Psychiatry, UT Southwestern Medical Center; he is also a Senior Fellow at the George HW Bush Foundation for US-China Relations and a Salzburg Global Fellow. He is also the author of The Negotiator’s Cross, The Last Violinist, and The Russian Diplomat’s Wife. The views expressed are entirely his own and do not represent the views of the U.S. Government, the U.S. Dept. of State, or UT Southwestern Medical Center.
REVIEW — Yariv Inbar is a former Mossad officer and spy novelist, who has authored numerous novels which delve into the human, emotional, and psychological aspects of espionage. In his superb newest novel, Behind The Trigger, he marvelously explores the psychological and moral challenges entailed in agent recruitment, and in the lives of both agents and their case officers.
Inbar’s novel starts off in Minsk, Belarus, with its two protagonists, Irit (a Russian-born Mossad officer) and Noor (the Syrian wife of a WMD expert) encountering each other ‘accidentally’ in Noor’s hotel room, when a Mossad ‘black bag’ operation goes awry. In the world of experienced case officers and psychoanalysts, there are no accidental encounters nor coincidences in espionage, or in psychotherapy. All things happen for a reason. In this first encounter, Irit saves Noor’s life, as Noor is contemplating suicide and is about to jump off the balcony, despairing about her marriage and inability to conceive a child. Irit’s failed mission is a moral choice, and reveals her humanity and decency, where she begins, through a series of further planned and carefully executed encounters, a budding relationship with Noor, which takes place via meetings, texts, and phone calls, where Irit poses as a Russian intelligence officer. Inbar manages their growing closeness and emotional connection with great sensitivity and tact. His portrait is a very human one, revealing both an emotionally damaged Mossad officer (who is also a wife and mother) and a proud Syrian woman, caught up in an emotionally abusive marriage, and struggling with her own shame, loneliness, and social isolation.
Inbar intuitively knows what great case officers and recruiters, as well as American and Israeli psychiatrists and psychologists specializing in the psychology of recruitment, such as Drs. David Charney, Ursula Wilder, Shlomo Peled, and Ilan Diamant – as well as legendary CIA officer James Lawler – mean when he [Lawler] says, “I never recruited a happy person.” Irit knows this too, and both she and her support team are constantly probing Noor’s vulnerabilities, sensitivities, and emotional triggers. But as Inbar senses so well, it is a two-way street, and to recruit Noor, Irit must confront her own personal frailties, emotional wounds, triggers, and her damaged soul. This part of the novel – which also introduces Irit’s colleague Menachem, a former Mossad officer and practicing psychiatrist – lends realism to the story. Indeed, Inbar’s portrait of Irit reminded me of Amos Oz’ tale of Yoel Ravid, a failed Mossad officer, in his brilliant, psychological novel, To Know A Woman.
The novel’s tempo accelerates when Irit recognizes (from a surveillance tape) that Noor’s husband has sexually assaulted Noor’s teenage sister, which in turn triggers – violently so - Irit’s post traumatic symptoms of her own childhood sexual abuse. The latter part of Inbar’s novel encompasses Irit’s trauma, her increasing isolation, and her own sense of being damaged, while marrying this to her recruitment of Noor, and its stunning resolution. The latter portion of the novel highlights more traditional espionage operations, with surveillance, a special forces mission, impressive tradecraft, and the huge risks taken to achieve dramatic mission success --- hardly what Irit, Noor, or even the Mossad expected. But brilliant recruiters and novelists both know that surprises happen, and they do not always play out as intended. In this, both Menachem (whom Irit again meets with at the end of the novel), Noor, and yes – even Dr. Sigmund Freud! – would agree.
Overall, Yariv Inbar’s novel is a superb read. It, with Irit’s and Noor’s tale, reminds readers that espionage is a very intimate, human, and flawed business, and a very psychological one at heart. But all recruitments – both successful and failed ones – eventually end, leaving both case officers and their agents to rebuild their emotionally charged lives. And every good case officer needs a friend, a listening ear --- just like Menachem.
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