I risk being sent back to my old job after all the experience I have gained. Tips/tricks to avoid this?

I work for a federal agency (in Science at the moment - I've got a tech degree and am finishing an environmental science degree with a couple subjects left) , currently on a contract with an end date of ~9 months from now. My current job, team, and manager, are all by far the best I have ever had. I applied for a permanent job for which there is currently funding, but in a different section. I start in less than 4 days and they haven't told me who my new manager is. I suspect directors are divvying up the remaining newbies from the recruitment process.

My old manager is gunning to get me back into his area - hard. To distil the situation between me and my old manager into its purest form, we have ideological differences about what is important in the workplace. He thinks he has no ambitious people on his team, I think his team is very competent and resilient but with strong preferences he has not explored. He is a big fish in a small pond who thinks he's the best. I would like to encourage people to see the best in themselves and hope they'd do the same for me. Also, he is managing what is essentially a call centre and I am currently collecting insects for entomology, triaging them, organising other responses in conjunction with my manager, and doing new things almost all the time. Learning a lot.

The price is high to leave my team. I'd be earning less in my hand but with a large retirement balance, lots of paid leave, financial certainty. Behind the scenes I have no idea what old mate, my old manager, is doing. I want to communicate to my recruiter that I don't want to go back to his team. I feel my old manager is using his inside knowledge about my recruitment process to try and get me back as he has been calling me asking for details. I feel so strongly that I would rescind my acceptance of their offer to just stay in this team a little longer/ avoid old mate's team, but I don't want to shoot myself in the foot like this if it's true that my old manager doesn't know very much about my situation, is lying about my change to his team being definite (he evaded my request for a start date with his team and was blurry on specifics, also told me not to tell anyone and called me on my personal mob), and in general is just trying to gauge my interest (I told him I enjoyed working with him and the team but if I do go back I'll decline the offer as it's not the direction I see myself going in, despite his pleading to accept, think about my future and tell me I will not be recognised for the work I currently do. This is also false as I've had press release recognition). My question is, has anyone had any experience approaching an issue like this? Should I just tell my recruiter it's not a good fit for my interests and experience if they break the news I'm going to old mate's team? Or should I just preemptively tell them my old manager called, threaten to pull out of the process if I need to go back to my old team, but in a nice way? Or call old mate's director (who tbh prob does not give a flying turd about me, based on info my old manager says) and try to find out what my old manager's level of knowledge and angle actually is? SO many options. Running out of time. Any other ideas?

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