Agent Storm: My Life Inside al-Qaeda (46 page)

At the customs hall in Sana’a nobody gave the fridge a second look; officials were used to foreigners bringing in appliances. I checked into a furnished apartment I had rented on 50th Street, the thoroughfare cutting through the southern part of the city. And I waited.

Tommy Chef had assured me that Abdul would return to Yemen from China the day after my arrival. I had no idea how he could be so confident, and in fact Abdul failed to arrive on the appointed day. I felt claustrophobic, holed up in an apartment on a mission I could not execute, my key intermediary thousands of miles away.

I got hold of the phone number Abdul was using in China from his anxious wife and
sent him a text
.

‘Come and see me here,’ he wrote.

‘Why don’t you come to Yemen?’ I responded.

‘I can’t, brother, but I need to see you.’

A few seconds later my phone started ringing. It was Abdul. He was agitated.

‘Murad, you must come here. I can’t tell you what I need to tell you over the phone.’

‘So you’re telling me to come to China?’

‘Yes, you must come, it’s very important.’

‘Let me figure this out,’ I replied in disbelief.

I called Soren in Denmark, taking a calculated risk with security.

‘Do you think you can persuade him to come back if you go?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ I replied.

‘Then book your ticket,’ he said. ‘But don’t take that iPhone we gave you.’

Perhaps Abdul picked China because he wanted to be sure he was beyond the eyes and the ears of the CIA.

Hardly had I arrived in Yemen than I was on the move again, connecting in Doha for the nine-hour flight to Hong Kong. I looked down at the vast cultivated heartland of India and the mystical green hills
and jungles of Myanmar and could not help but be excited, despite the unpredictability of this mission. I always relished the prospect of arriving somewhere new. And the view on approach into Hong Kong was more spectacular than I could have imagined: soaring skyscrapers hugging steep hills, and wooden junks with their orange sails navigating between the islands.

From the airport I crossed on to the mainland and walked into Shenzhen railway station, a vast glass edifice. I thought of Yemen. Sana’a was nine hours and ninety years away. The Arab world was being left behind.

The new high-speed link between Shenzhen and Guangzhou had recently opened and covered the seventy miles in about thirty minutes.

Abdul had agreed to meet me at the railway station in Guangzhou, one of China’s booming megacities. Amid the thousands of Chinese commuters hurrying to and from trains, he was not difficult to find, dark-skinned and slight. We embraced. He looked tense.

‘What’s going on?’ I asked him.

‘I can’t tell you yet. We have our phones with us so it’s not safe,’ he replied.

I dropped my luggage and the cheap mobile phone I had brought in the apartment where he was staying. He told me he had come to Guangzhou because he knew some Yemeni businessmen in the city. We walked through thronging markets and squares where roller-skaters and acrobats performed. Skyscrapers lined the wide river flowing through the heart of the city.

Our destination was a spa. Before going into the jacuzzi room, we undressed in front of each other. Abdul clearly wanted to be sure that whatever he had to say could not be recorded. When we were alone in the gurgling water, Abdul turned to me with a worried look in his eyes.

‘I have something to tell you.’

I cut him off. ‘Remember the email I sent you about what they told me at Copenhagen airport.
I know
…’

I wanted to get ahead of him. I suppose it was part of the contest I felt between us.

‘But the CIA, they’re … they’re going to kill you along with the terrorists if you travel down with me,’ Abdul blurted.

‘
Subhan’Allah
– what?’

‘Murad, they don’t want to kill you in Sana’a. They want to kill you when you are sitting with Abu Basir and the other brothers,’ he continued.

He told me his CIA handlers had given him $25,000 to purchase a Toyota Prado SUV. He had taken the car to a workshop used by the Agency, where it had been fitted with a satellite transmitter connected to an electronic switch under the car seat. During a test run the equipment worked perfectly.

‘One click would signal you had joined me in the car. Two clicks would signal we had left Sana’a. Three clicks would tell them we are in the same location as the target. And four clicks would mean I had left you alone with the target.’

He grabbed me by the shoulder. ‘That’s when you were going to be killed. They’ll tell the world you were a terrorist like the others.’

Only my mother would know differently. It was plausible, but I was not convinced.

He climbed out of the jacuzzi. ‘Murad, you can hit me now, you can hate me, but I couldn’t bear it on my shoulders if you were hurt. I was scared about driving down with you, and that’s why I left the country.’

I had not yet said a word. The CIA had been avoiding me, yet wanted me to return to Yemen. They knew that I had recorded one of their agents in Copenhagen the previous year and I had threatened to go public. There was also the iPhone which I had been told to leave on at all times.

I remembered the warning from Jacob, the outdoor instructor: ‘
Don’t sit with the terrorists because the Americans won’t hesitate to kill you
.’

Abdul was not exactly the most reliable of sources. But he did seem genuinely scared. Did he fear he would be killed with me?

‘How long have you been working for the Americans?’ I finally asked.

‘You remember when years ago I told you I was arrested by intelligence services in Djibouti? That’s when they recruited me. They left me no choice but to work for them. I am sorry that I lied to you.’

‘Did you tell the CIA about me?’ I asked.

‘All I told the Americans was that you disagreed with the brothers about targeting civilians.’

Abdul was not an easy man to read, but he did not seem to have any inkling that I too might be working for Western intelligence. I fought back the urge to tell him.

‘May Allah reward you for telling me this,’ I told him.

He broke down. ‘Murad – I am done working for the Americans. Do you think you can help me claim asylum in Denmark?’ I promised to find out but told him it would be difficult.

When we got back to his residence I prayed with him. Now was not the time to drop my guard.

That night I had trouble getting to sleep. I didn’t know whether to believe Abdul or not. I now knew he had lied to me just as much as I had lied to him. One idea kept coming back: could he be trying to scare me so he could return to Yemen and deliver the supplies himself? Just by being seen with me in Jaar he had boosted his credibility with Wuhayshi. And he could claim I had asked him to deliver the supplies. That would be one way for the Americans to tunnel directly into AQAP without needing me.

Then another thought: might Abdul have flipped back to the al-Qaeda side, like the Jordanian ‘triple agent’, Humam al-Balawi, who had killed Elizabeth Hanson and the other CIA agents in Afghanistan? Was he testing me on Wuhayshi’s orders? If I returned to Yemen and didn’t warn al-Qaeda of Abdul’s treachery they would know I was a spy.

It was like trying to solve a Rubik’s Cube blindfolded.

The next morning I was awoken by the buzzing of an incoming text. Jesper was asking me if I had persuaded Abdul to return.

I replied: ‘I don’t think he will travel or come down there while there is still fighting. He’s convinced that I’m going to die and he will be taken with me.’

In a follow-up text I requested a meeting with my handlers in Doha on my way back to Yemen. Jesper said the Americans would be there too, but asked me to try to change Abdul’s mind. Late that night, 19 May, I texted again: ‘It doesn’t look good … the boy doesn’t want to travel right now.’

Jesper’s reply came in a few minutes later:
‘Can you ask for the car keys?’

I stared at the screen, startled. Did the Danes also want me to drive alone to the south? Were they in league with the CIA? Or did the Americans just want their high-tech car back?

There was no way I was going to ask Abdul for the keys. I texted: ‘I tried with the car but unfortunately no he ready in one or two months. Right now he wants to have a break and to travel to the EU.’

At that moment Abdul’s scenario, which seemed so outlandish at first, was beginning to look more than plausible.

Two days later I was checking in at the Mövenpick Hotel close to Doha airport. Jesper and Soren had already arrived and I met them for breakfast.

I related Abdul’s warning, trying to sound sceptical but wanting to test their reaction. They both dismissed it out of hand.

‘Where is Big Brother?’ I asked.

‘They’re in the hotel but they don’t want to meet directly with you,’ Jesper replied.

‘Fantastic,’ I replied.

‘Look, Akhi, this mission is very important to us. Do you think you might be ready to drive the supplies down to the south of Yemen yourself?’ Soren said.

‘You have to be joking,’ I replied, reeling at such a rash proposition. Even if Abdul hadn’t unnerved me with his warning, there was no way I was going alone into Yemen’s war zone.

I asked them to put another idea to the Americans – that I should arrange a courier to pick up the camping fridge, cosmetic box and other items in Sana’a.

‘That method is tried and trusted – it worked with Nabhan and Awlaki,’ I said.

‘That sounds like a good idea,’ Jesper replied. He said they would ask.

When they were gone I sat in the lobby, staring vacantly at guests arriving and leaving, smiling and chatting, travelling the world in peace.

Eventually they returned.

‘Big Brother says the courier idea is not an option,’ Jesper said in a matter-of-fact tone. ‘They insist you deliver it to Abu Basir in person.’

‘I don’t think I’m comfortable doing that,’ I replied with what seemed masterful understatement.

I was staggered by the US insistence that I personally deliver the equipment. Time and time again I had successfully used couriers – with the Americans’ encouragement – to supply Awlaki and through him AQAP. The ploy had also worked in Somalia. The Americans’ refusal to even discuss this approach made me fear a trap. I wondered if they were even in the hotel.

‘You don’t need to give us your answer right away – sleep on it,’ Jesper replied.

The next day – 22 May – Jesper, Soren and I went for lunch at L’wzaar, an expensive seafood restaurant in Doha. Decorated floor to ceiling with a mosaic of blue marble tiles, it brought cool to the oppressive heat of the Gulf. On one side were the still waters of the Gulf and on the other a row of chefs preparing fish.

‘So, did you think about it?’ Jesper asked me.

I allowed a moment to pass.

‘I think I’m going to call an end to it,’ I told them.

Jesper and Soren looked at each other.

‘It’s up to you – it’s your call,’ Soren replied.

And so, at a fish restaurant on the shores of the Persian Gulf, the curtain dropped on a journey that had begun, in the Islamist ferment at Dammaj on the other side of Arabia, fifteen years before.

It was an anti-climactic way to end more than five years on the frontline. And it was also – to me at least – inexplicable. The US, which had put the ‘War on Terror’ at the top of its agenda, had walked away from an opportunity to neutralize two of its most dangerous opponents – Nasir al-Wuhayshi and Ibrahim al-Asiri – and deal a blow to the most active of al-Qaeda’s affiliates.

That decision would soon appear as a major error of judgement.

I flew back to Yemen the next day, 23 May, to fetch my belongings. After I landed I received a text message from Soren asking me to return the fridge and make-up box to CIA agents in Sana’a. The last thing the Americans wanted was tracking gear falling into the wrong hands.

I told them I would drive my silver Suzuki to the Sana’a trade centre – the closest thing in Yemen to a shopping mall – with the equipment inside.

‘Place the small box in the large box and place it on the back seat just behind the driver’s seat,’ Soren’s message read.

Even in these final moments, there was a change of plan. Another text from Soren asked me to leave the box on the tarmac of the car park. I did, but I was furious. There were security guards in the area. Had they noticed me leaving a large box unattended in the car park – in a country where plenty of bombs exploded – I could have been in deep trouble.

A few minutes later Soren forwarded a message from his CIA contact.

‘I can confirm its picked up. Tell our boy “good job”.’

I replied: ‘Roger that, my pleasure.’ If only phones had a key for irony.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

A Spy in the Cold

2012–2013

In July 2013, just over a year after my last mission in Yemen, an online message stream was intercepted by the US National Security Agency at its sprawling complex in Fort Meade, Maryland, and filtered through the most powerful supercomputers on the planet. Once the message was deciphered and translated it triggered a state of high alert
.