Agent Storm: My Life Inside al-Qaeda (31 page)

The special treatment continued into the New Year.

I was invited to a course in counter-surveillance in Edinburgh run by Andy and Kevin from MI5.

In the morning, in my hotel room, they explained how I could detect that I was being followed and ways to shake a tail. One method
involved finding an excuse to stop while walking and discreetly look around. Another way involved taking an apparently random zigzag route to see if the tail followed. But if your route was too random, professionals would know you were on to them. They said the same principles applied if I was driving. It made me recall my helter-skelter ride through the streets of Nairobi courtesy of Ikrimah’s driver, Mohammed. Andy and Kevin also told me how to check whether a contact was being followed. I should tell them to pass through various locations and discreetly observe them.

My MI5 handlers told me that several agents I had never met had been assigned to follow me through the streets of Edinburgh. The first drill was for me to spot any pursuers and then shake them off. I set off up the hill from my hotel near the train station, admiring the turrets of Edinburgh Castle high above, gleaming in the winter sunshine. When I reached the castle I took a left and started walking down the Royal Mile. Despite a cold wind, the street was packed with tourists. It would be difficult to know who, if anyone, was on my tail.

I abruptly stopped at a cashmere store and checked the prices in the window. In the reflection I noticed a man in a black-and-blue jacket walk past me. When I set off again down the street he had stopped, and was looking at postcards on an outdoor stall. After I passed him I didn’t look round. Instead I ducked into an alley. When I peered back from behind a wall I noticed he had taken the same route.

I increased my pace, taking as random a path as possible through the cobbled side streets. This was proving a very enjoyable exercise. Soon I had no idea where I was, but my tail had disappeared. When I recovered my bearings and got back to the hotel, I was told I’d passed the first test.

That evening, after several more drills, Kevin and Andy took me to a small shop specializing in haggis on the Royal Mile. I had no idea what it was.

‘You need to taste this. It’s a Scottish tradition,’ Andy said.

As my face broke into a puzzled frown, they both began laughing. And then they told me exactly how haggis was made. But the fun was over. British intelligence were not investing so much valuable time in me for my own pleasure.

As we sat down in a quiet corner of a local restaurant, Kevin looked me in the eye and addressed me in a serious tone.

‘We’re not comfortable with what the Americans want to do with Aminah. Our job is to gather information. We don’t participate in assassinations. We don’t believe we should help get Aminah to Yemen. We fear she may get killed.’

But there was another element to Kevin’s message which didn’t exactly speak to the famous ‘special relationship’ between the British and US intelligence communities.

‘Morten, we can’t offer you anything like the money they can but one thing we can promise you is this. We won’t fuck you over. You know we don’t lie. We don’t like this plan with Aminah and we don’t want you to get fucked over.’

I turned over my options. The British seemed willing to invest in me for the long term. I liked my handlers and I too was concerned for Aminah’s safety. But I had not so long ago harboured doubts about their endgame, and had suspected they were trying to manoeuvre their own informant into Awlaki’s inner circle.

In the next few days both the Danes and the Americans pressed the mission hard, despite the fact that Danish law explicitly forbade PET from taking part in any assassination operation overseas.

Soon after my Edinburgh training, Klang called.

‘We’re going to Iceland – just us Danes, and Big Brother is paying.’

A few days later we were relaxing in the thermal waters of the blue lagoon in Reykjavik. There was a new addition to the team – an officer in his late forties called Jesper. He was Klang’s opposite. Klang was a peacock, showing off his physique. There was nothing of the show-off in Jesper, who had a restrained dry wit. He had a receding hairline and plain features, and was thin to the point of looking frail. While Klang had cut his teeth in the hurly-burly of the drugs squad, Jesper was something of a desk jockey. Before joining PET he’d worked in banking and the financial crimes division of the police. I asked a fellow bather to take a picture of me and the PET agents. Surprisingly my handlers did not object.

Later in my suite in the five-star Radisson Blu hotel in Reykjavik I relayed to them what the British had told me.

‘Morten, our view is that we should proceed with the Americans. It’ll be more fun. And they have more money,’ Klang said.

The money was a factor. They were offering to double my retainer. It was hardly a CEO’s salary – some $4,000 a month. But to someone who had frequently been reduced to gathering the loose change trapped in the sofa, it felt like serious money.

I also felt I had an opportunity to influence the way the Aminah mission unfolded. Perhaps there was a way to cage Awlaki – rather than kill him.

In the first weeks of 2010 Awlaki and I continued to exchange emails, despite the intense pressure on him. He wanted Aminah to travel as soon as possible.

‘Since things are getting stricter for foreigners over here with new laws … if you could try to speed up her travel into Yemen before she gets on the radar or is prevented from entering the country,’ he wrote.

On the last day of January he strongly advised me against travelling to meet Aminah, concerned it might jeoparadize her chances of reaching Yemen.

‘If you go there or inquire about her you may get her in trouble or yourself in trouble because the eyes are on you.

‘There are millions of people around the world that listen to me but in the end it is a handful whom I can count upon. It’s like looking for needles in a haystack. And since you are one of those brs that I can count on, I care about you, and your security, and your wellness, but I also care about your ideas and manhaj [methodology].’

For a few moments I was touched by his words. There was still a streak of humanity about him – he was a marked man but looking out for people he felt he could rely upon. I began to think how I might reel him in quietly and present him to the Yemeni authorities. He would no longer be free, but he would be alive.

Just two weeks later the CIA fast-tracked the Aminah mission. I was summoned to a meeting in Helsingør. Klang and Jesper picked me up at the railway station, a magnificent neo-Renaissance building with a towering triangular roof and an impressive array of turrets and spires.

‘We’ve negotiated with the Americans,’ Klang said as we drove out from the station. ‘They are prepared to offer you $250,000. The deal is
the moment Aminah lands in Sana’a and leaves the airport the money is yours.’

Jesper chimed in: ‘But obviously you didn’t hear this from us. One of the “masters of the universe” is here from Washington DC to make the offer in person.’

His delivery was acidic. The Danes might want to share a bed with the Americans, but they could be a jealous partner.

To our right the waters of the Øresund, the channel separating Sweden and Denmark, sparkled in the winter sunshine. After a few miles we reached Hornbaek, a holiday hamlet. Danish intelligence had rented a villa on the banks of a tree-lined lake, a setting of tranquillity in which to plot the elimination of one of America’s enemies.

The third-highest-ranking official in Danish intelligence was in the reception room waiting for me in chinos and a blue open-neck shirt. He was tall and had cobalt-blue eyes and straw-coloured hair, which he combed neatly in a parting. Soren, the team leader, introduced him as ‘Tommy’ and from then on my handlers always referred to him as Tommy Chef because of his natural authority and his rank as PET’s most senior covert officer. I was told he reported directly to PET’s powerful director, Jakob Scharf. He gave me a firm handshake and thanked me for my efforts.

The remaining members of my PET team were assembled around a white dining table, on their best behaviour. The American delegation arrived a short time later. There was Jed in jeans and cowboy boots followed by a tall man with carefully parted salt-and-pepper hair. For a moment I thought he must be the man with the chequebook, but he was the CIA’s Copenhagen station chief, ‘George’. He held the door open for a short balding man. This was ‘Alex’, one of the masters of the universe, and one with a Napoleon complex.

Tommy Chef greeted him with a formal handshake, and then the American turned to me.

‘We are really pleased with your results so far and thank you for them,’ he said. His voice seemed to bounce off the walls.

‘We see this as a big opportunity to stop Awlaki, which as you know is a high priority for my government. President Obama himself has been briefed on this. I know that because I report up to the White
House,’ he said, unnecessarily. His two subordinates put on a show of being suitably impressed.

‘So let’s cut to the chase: my government is prepared to remunerate you a quarter-million dollars for your matchmaking services. Get Aminah to Yemen and we will transfer the money.’

Remunerate, I thought: how these guys love to play with the big words.

‘You’ve got yourself a deal,’ I replied.

‘That’s very good,’ he said. ‘I want to make one thing clear: you’ll be mainly reporting to us now, not our British friends.’

The Danish agents brought in a collection of
smørrebrød
– sandwiches with smoked salmon, pickled herring and salami sausage.

Alex sat forward earnestly. ‘We need a pretext for you to meet Aminah.’

Despite Awlaki’s reservations about me travelling to meet her in Vienna, the Americans weren’t about to let Aminah travel to Yemen without checking her out first.

I pulled out my laptop and began drafting an email to the cleric, writing:

‘Regarding the sister, she insist me to meet her in Wienna, Austria, as she got questions which cannot be asked over the phone.’

Alex insisted on changing some of the language, no doubt so he could claim credit for its authorship.

I then opened up the Mujahideen Secrets software on my computer, entered my personal key and Awlaki’s public key and hit ‘encrypt’. I copied and pasted the resulting encoded text into my email browser, selected an anonymous email address Awlaki used, and hit ‘send’.

Alex observed the process, fascinated.

‘You know you’re literally making hundreds of agents busy back Stateside,’ he said.

Awlaki replied five days later.

‘If you visit her I may upload for you a short clip from myself as an encrypted file and you can have her hear it to make sure it is myself.’

In offering up a video recording Awlaki was responding to Aminah’s request for a private message on camera so she could be reassured that it really was Awlaki at the other end.

I told PET of Awlaki’s email via the Norwegian email service provider Telenor. We used Telenor because it had better encryption safeguards than most providers. The Danes shared a great deal with the Americans, but like any intelligence service PET wanted the information first. It was a way of reminding the Americans that I was after all a Danish asset. But using Telenor’s encryption safeguards was also symptomatic of the suspicions that every agency had about its communications being intercepted. MI5 had told me not to say anything of importance over the phone – in case the Russians or Mossad were listening in. And MI6 simply refused to use the phone at all.

Days later Awlaki wrote again, saying he was now living in a house rather than a tent.

‘I personally prefer this arrangement over the tent in the mountains because it gives me a better setup for reading, writing and doing research.’

He attached a long private note for Aminah and asked me to instruct her how to use the Mujahideen Secrets software, adding: ‘Most importantly she needs to setup a clean email that is not opened from home.’

Jed accompanied me to Vienna for the rendezvous, and over a beer the night before Aminah’s arrival I was taken aback to find out we shared an appreciation of Metallica. I still knew so little about him. He was married and had several kids and a Dobermann dog. Where he was from, where he lived and worked – that was not my business and not my place to ask. But I did appreciate his determination to get results.

Alex’s plan required me to bring Aminah past the way station of a designated bakery shop to the Lounge Gersthof, a nearby bar and restaurant where they had a surveillance team waiting. But at the last minute it dawned on me that it would be absurd to take her to a place that served alcohol. Instead I suggested a nearby McDonald’s.

We slid into a booth. I showed her the note from Awlaki on my laptop.

‘Sister the step you are about to make is a great one and I pray you are ready for it. However, let me share this with you from my personal experience …’ his message stated.

‘Overall for a while I had a very easy and comfortable life. On the other hand, I have lived in a tent with no running water and [been] stripped from my freedom of movement.

‘But let me tell you that the pleasure Allah put in my heart and the tranquillity and peace that I felt going through difficulty for His sake made me despise going back to my former life. I would not exchange it for the world.

‘[The months in prison] were the best days of my life. I never thought that I could handle that … but I did. Why? Because Allah helped me to …

‘The problem [you’ll face] is limitations on freedom of movement and communicating with others. Also being in a foreign country with no friends and the language barrier is an issue …’

Aminah read the letter slowly and without expression. She turned away from the screen and looked at me.

‘Do you know the consequences?’ I asked her.

‘Yes, I’m ready,
Inshallah
,’ Aminah replied. ‘I want to devote myself to Islam and I want Sheikh Anwar to be my teacher.’

She asked me many questions about Yemen; her lack of overseas travel (her only visit to the Arab world had been to a resort in Tunisia) meant she had little idea about the life she would face. But there seemed little doubt about her devotion.