A Divided Spy: A gripping espionage thriller from the master of the modern spy novel. Charles Cumming

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       10

      They were smiling as they handed the envelope to Azhar Ahmed Iqbal. There were three of them. The oldest of the men, whom Azhar had never seen before, said that it was a genuine British passport that had come by diplomatic bag from Amman. An official in the UK Passport Office had been compromised by brave and resourceful agents of ISIS and had produced the passport in return for a sum of money.

      Azhar opened the envelope. The passport was hard and cold to the touch. It was clean and new and would not easily bend in his hands. They were still smiling at him as they watched him look at it and flick through the pages.

      Three months earlier, Azhar had been taken into a room in Raqqa and had sat on a stool beside a blank white wall. Someone had taken his photograph. One of the men, a fighter from Tunisia who had worked as a barber, had shaved off Azhar’s beard and cut his hair so that he would look good in front of the camera. Azhar saw that this photograph had now been laminated inside the passport. He looked successful and educated. He looked like a businessman. It was exactly what they wanted.

      ‘You like the way you look?’ Jalal asked with a sly grin.

      ‘Yeah. I like it,’ Azhar replied.

      ‘But now you are not Azhar Ahmed Iqbal from Leeds, no? You are no longer Omar Assya. Who are you, my friend?’

      Azhar looked down at the name printed beneath the photograph. He had been using the kunya ‘Omar Assya’ for at least three years as a way of obscuring his identity from the West Yorkshire Police. He had grown used to it.

      ‘Shahid Khan.’ Azhar did not mind the name. They had made him a year older. But then he saw his place of birth. ‘From Bradford?’ he said. ‘Why did you say I was from fookin’ Bradford?’

      All the men laughed. When they had calmed down, when Azhar had finished talking about the rivalry between Leeds and Bradford, and when he had started to get used to being called ‘Shahid’, Jalal told him that he had to protect the passport at all costs. He should also carry it around with him so that it became slightly worn and looked less new. Before returning to the United Kingdom, Shahid was to fly to Dubai and then to Cairo so that the passport would show arrival and departure stamps from the UAE and Egypt. This would help to dispel any suspicion if a member of the UK Border Police at Heathrow looked more closely at the passport and decided to question Shahid about his movements. Should this happen, Shahid was to say that he had been attending his cousin’s wedding in Dubai and had returned home via Cairo so that he could visit the Pyramids. If he was subjected to more intense scrutiny – if, for example, he was taken into an interview room by an officer of the British MI5 – Shahid was to rely on the biographical details of his real life. So: Shahid Khan went to the same school as Azhar Ahmed Iqbal; he had the same cousins, the same brothers and sisters, as Azhar Ahmed Iqbal. That way he could tell his favourite family stories and make his background sound more realistic. The trick was to stay as close to the truth as possible. It was when you started to lie that you ran into trouble.

      ‘What about my job?’ Azhar asked. ‘What do I do for work?’

      Jalal said that this was a good question which proved that they had chosen the right soldier for the operation in England. He told ‘Shahid’ that he was to say he was unemployed and about to move to London to look for work. He was to say that he had spent the last of his savings on the trips to Dubai and Cairo. Jalal would see to it that a Facebook page and mobile phone account were set up in Shahid Khan’s name. He would have other profiles on the Internet that would fool the British MI5. Jalal told Shahid that he had time in which to adapt to his new identity and to ask more questions like the one he had just been clever enough to ask. Jalal insisted that it was ‘extremely unlikely’ that Shahid would be questioned by the British. Thousands of young Muslim men passed through Heathrow Airport every day. They would make sure that his flight arrived at the busiest time of day. Shahid would be well dressed – they would provide good clothes for him – and he would look educated and respectable. It was the will of Allah that Shahid Khan be allowed to pass into his former country.

      Shahid had absolute faith in Jalal’s judgment. It was Jalal who had taught him about the beauty of the Caliphate. Shahid embraced him. He embraced the other men. They told him that he was brave and would soon be spoken of as a hero who had avenged the Prophet. Shahid believed them. It was all that he wanted. To be a hero in their eyes, in the eyes of the true believers, and to do God’s will.