‘After the mission, you will vanish and lie low. Till you rise again to oversee another mission. You will be our sleeper cells that are at work 24x7, but whose presence is felt only when they destroy the enemy out of the blue,’ Abu-Lakhvi said.

‘Understood, janaab,’ Atharv said.

‘Umar-Qama will prepare you for this role. ISI also needs dedicated jihadis like you in India. So you will work for the LeT as well as the ISI.’

‘Initially, you will settle in Mumbai and Delhi. You will have to procure government documents in the name of your assumed Hindu identities.

‘We will communicate via telephone calls made from PCOs; no mobile phones. We may at times call you at designated PCO booths using satellite phones. If there is a need, we will provide you with a satellite phone for specific missions.

‘We have men in Dubai. You will be given their numbers. You will call those numbers and our boys will put you in touch with us – Umar-Qama bhai or Al-Wali bhai, who are your commanders. I am there, of course, in cases of emergency.

‘And finally, you will visit the ISI office in Lahore before leaving for India via Nepal.’

39. RETURN TO INDIA

39

RETURN TO INDIA

‘You will choose Hindu names to create a cover in India,’ Umar-Qama told Atharv. On seeing Atharv’s brow furrow, he added, ‘It’s nothing, brother. You see, Hindus are a very big, diverse community. It’s like an ocean, you will just vanish. With a Hindu identity you will easily melt into the crowd.’

Abu-Lakhvi had left for Muzaffarabad after meeting Atharv and the other four CTC operatives. The five were thereafter taken to another location, a bungalow on the outskirts of Khuda Baksh Enclave, which was also an LeT safehouse.

‘I will be Atharv Iyer,’ said Atharv. ‘The others have chosen their assumed names too,’ he added. ‘Sadiq will be Anant Ramakrishnan, Tahir will be Nirav Reddy, while Usman will be Rohit Kumar and Zafar, Sahil Sharma.’

‘Okay. Make sure you all learn every aspect of your cover identities. Update Al-Wali about the cover profiles you create for yourselves. You will get them cleared by him,’ Umar-Qama instructed them.

‘But remember, you will not disobey us, come what may. You will execute what gets decided upon and cleared from here. Al-Wali will instruct you on how to communicate.’ With that, Umar-Qama left.

Al-Wali created email IDs for the five and gave them his own email ID. ‘The email service provider we have chosen to use is AOL. Their servers are in America and are inaccessible to the Indian counter-intelligence spies,’ Al-Wali said with a smile.

Al-Wali made Atharv and the other four learn an alpha-numeric code to be used for all written or verbal communication.

The code had eleven horizontal columns; each column had four vertical rows. The alpha-numeric system was complex, but a simple way to conceal information, Al-Wali told them.

THE ALPHA-NUMERIC MATRIX: