by Ben Stewart
Now the prisoners are banging on the floor and the ceiling. Frank worked out the thumping on the first night. Two bangs means, ‘You’ve got mail.’ Bang bang bang means, ‘I have mail for you.’
To stay up until morning, Boris and Yuri brew a drink they call chifir, which they sip as long as the doroga is running. They take fifty grammes of tea, boil it up in a mug, take the tea out, add another fifty grammes of tea and boil it again. Then they add more fresh tea and boil it again – and again and again – until it’s thick, like a soup. For some of the prisoners, chifir is not strong enough, they prefer to drink a concoction they call kon – again, it means ‘stallion’. It’s the same as chifir but with ten spoons of coffee powder added, and a splash of condensed milk.
Frank lies back on his bunk and watches the road come alive, counting the number of messages coming through his cell. Tonight is quiet, maybe a hundred notes. But on a busy night there are three or four hundred, and on those nights Boris and Yuri are absolutely buzzing because they have to drink themselves into a stupor with the chifir.
The road is against regulations. All pre-trial investigative detainment should mean total isolation. ‘But the road is our revenge,’ says Boris. ‘All the things we do, the illegal things, they give us self-respect. We resist the rules. And there is solidarity in resistance.’
Roman is at gulyat – exercise hour – with his young cellmate. The kid shouts over the wall, explaining to somebody unseen that one of the Greenpeace prisoners is in with him. A commanding Russian voice comes back. ‘Listen to me, and listen attentively. When you return to your cell, tell the guard this. Tell him I have instructed that you must break out. Be clear to use those exact words. Do not say anything more, do not ask him again, just wait. Do you understand?’
‘I understand.’
When the gulyat is over, Roman and the kid return to their cell. The kid pulls a lever that drops a flag in the corridor. A guard opens the hatch.
‘What do you want?’
‘The kotlovaya has instructed that I must break out.’
The guard says nothing, the hatch slams closed. Then in the early evening the door swings open and the kid is told to pack his things and leave. He shakes Roman’s hand, wishes him luck and disappears.
And that is that. An act of compassion by the kotlovaya, to protect Roman Dolgov from the taint of being a woollen guy.
*
On the second floor of Murmansk SIZO-1 the eight women from the Sunrise crew are being held alone. There is nobody to tell them about the road, they have no cellmates to explain this place. They don’t know why the prisoners spend all night banging and thumping and screaming.
When Alex sees a rope dangling outside her cell with a bag hanging from the end, she jumps with surprise. She gets up from her bunk, wraps herself in her purple ski jacket and cautiously, silently, she approaches the window. The bag is small, the size of a fist, and it’s swinging gently back and forth. She comes closer, stands up on her toes and looks into it. And she sees it’s full of white powder.
Whoa! Cocaine. Okay, don’t touch it. Do. Not. Touch. It. She backs away from the window. Okay, I’ve got these absolute nutters banging on the ceiling above me. They’re obviously all fucking high on coke. And they’re dealing. They’re trying to sell me drugs, maybe half a kilogramme of cocaine. Be careful now. You’ve got to play this right.
She edges forward, bends down, tries to look up to see where the rope is coming from. And all the time the bag is silently swinging in a narrow arch in front of her window. Then suddenly the rope twitches, the bag is pulled up and the coke disappears.
Alex retreats to her bunk. The screams and shouts and bangs and crashes are exploding all around her, from above and below. She stares at the ceiling, her heart racing. If she’d had a cellmate she would have known that one of the Russian prisoners on the third floor was offering her some sugar for her tea.
Solitary confinement makes the hours feel like days and the days feel like weeks. The women maintain their sanity by constantly tapping to each other, using the code they agreed on that first gulyat. Camila, Sini, Faiza and Alex tap for hours. Each conversation takes an age to conduct, with a single sentence taking five or ten minutes to tap out. In an era of instant communication these exchanges take on a poetic quality, where every word has great meaning.
They greet each other at 6 a.m. as the porridge comes, and again at 8 a.m. when the prison falls silent and they grab what sleep they can. Then from 11 a.m. they’re tapping constantly.
good morning how are you all
am seeing lawyer today
is there news
everybody talking about us
my lawyer said its big on british german dutch tv
my lawyer said they closed road outside Russian embassy in buenos aires because so many people protesting
wow
omg
The women tap to each other all day. And when they’re not tapping, they’re dancing to the music channel on their TV sets. There’s an evening show called Bridge in Time – a compilation of timeless tunes from the sixties onwards. The women throw themselves around their cells, drumming on the radiator pipe and thumping the walls to the Beatles, the Stones, Led Zeppelin and Michael Jackson. Anything to feel a connection with other human beings.
The highlight of the day is the gulyat. Every time it gives them a surge of energy to actually talk to each other. They have to shout over the wall, but that hour can be joyful. They pull themselves from their fear and depression by sharing any good news they’ve heard. They’ve been told that people across the world are standing up for them. Their lawyers and the consuls from the embassies have told them their fate is a global news story. And when they share all this they feel something electric in the air. It’s pride, and it flows over the walls.
Even now, facing perhaps fifteen years in this place, they tell each other they don’t regret the protest. They know their friends on the outside are fighting for them. They know they did the right thing. ‘And if we did the right thing,’ Camila shouts out, ‘then what can go wrong?’
She’s twenty-one years old, the oldest of six children, and apart from holidays in Uruguay and a trip to the USA, this is her first time abroad. Camila is classically attractive with olive skin and long brown hair – an archetype of Latin America. On her first day in this place the guards confiscated the silver ring she wore in her nose. She grew up watching National Geographic documentaries on Argentine television, spending hours in front of the screen staring at the images of animals, savannah and rainforest. For years before joining the Sunrise she would lie awake wondering when she’d see for herself the creatures and lands featured in those programmes.
A year ago she was working in a fashion outlet, selling clothes to rich women. She hated that. Later she worked as a receptionist at an English language institute. Then suddenly the call came in from Greenpeace. They needed climbers for a direct action protest in the Arctic. Camila told her boss she was leaving. ‘Sorry, there’s something I need to do. One of those once-in-a-lifetime things. I quit.’
TWELVE
Frank is standing in a small room with brown walls in the depths of Murmansk SIZO-1. In front of him is a Russian man dressed in full camouflage fatigues, a peaked military hat and heavy eighteen-hole combat boots. The man is wearing Reactolite glasses, the ones that turn into sunglasses when it’s bright. At his side, swinging from a finger, is a thick black baton.
He is the prison’s resident psychologist.
Frank bites his lip and eyes the stick then slowly, cautiously, he lowers himself into a chair opposite the shrink. The guy looks like he’s about to be deployed to Afghanistan. Frank’s thinking, please, my friend, this is not a good look for a psychologist. You need to do something to soften your image.
The man sits down, lays the truncheon on the table, shuffles some papers then looks up. Frank scratches his nose. The man nods.
‘You happy?’
‘Not really.’
‘Sometimes, yes.’
‘You want to … to harm Frank?’
‘Do myself in? No. Not yet.’
‘You like food here?’
‘It’s okay,’ says Frank. ‘I’m still alive.’
‘People in cell, they good?’
‘They’re fine. Fine.’
The man nods. He jots down some notes then points at Frank and says, ‘You, two-two-seven.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Two-two-seven,’ says the psychologist.
‘That’s a cell?’
‘You, two-two-seven.’
‘It’s a non-smoking cell?’ asks Frank. ‘I said I wanted a non-smoking cell.’
‘Two-two-seven. Smoking? Smoking?’ And the psychologist sucks on an invisible cigarette then points at Frank.
Frank shakes his head. ‘No, no. No cigarette. I want a non-smoking cell. Are you saying two-two-seven is non-smoking?’
‘Two-two-seven.’
‘Yes, my new cell. Non-smoking. Let’s go and look at it, let’s go and look at two-two-seven right away.’
‘Go?’
‘Yeah, let’s go to the cell.’
So off they go, the psychologist leading Frank down the corridor, his baton swinging at his waist, his boots stomping into the floor, the sound echoing down the hallway. But then he stops outside Frank’s cell, the one he’s just left.
‘No no,’ says Frank. ‘This is not two-two-seven.’
‘Uh?’
‘Not two-two-seven. Two-two-seven is downstairs.’
He points at Frank. ‘You. Two-two-seven. You.’ He lifts the baton and jabs it into Frank’s stomach, prodding him backwards until he’s inside the cell, then the psychologist pulls the door closed. Frank’s nostrils fill with the smell of cigarette smoke and wet laundry. The sound of stomping boots fades to silence. He stands in the middle of his cell, scratching his head, confused.
A few hours later a swarm of officials bursts in – five guards, a guy in a suit, a translator. And the one in the suit says, ‘You must take this.’ It’s a charge sheet, it says he’s officially accused of piracy under Article 227 of the Criminal Code of Russia. And right then Frank realises what the psychologist was trying to tell him.
He feels exposed. Very, very exposed. The psychologist was telling him he needs to get mentally prepared because piracy is ten to fifteen years. Frank is sure the guy was pointing at him and him alone, that he’s being singled out for Article 227. They found his laptop, he thinks, and they probably found the flash card with the protest plan on it. He left it on the ship. He downloaded everything from the laptop onto the stick and taped it under the table in his cabin. But it’s the FSB, isn’t it? The KGB. They’ve found it, of course they have. Oh Christ, why did he even keep that memory stick? Why didn’t he just throw it through a porthole into the sea? Then he remembers why, and the realisation makes him punch the wall and stifle a sob. That memory stick. That stupid fucking memory stick. He’s going to lose contact with his kids because of that damn memory stick, and the only reason he didn’t throw it overboard was because he had all his receipts copied onto it and he thought his boss would bollock him if he came back from Russia and couldn’t do his expenses.
Yeah, the FSB have found it. And they’ve probably gone on Google and worked out that he’s occupied oil rigs across the world. And now they’re going for the ringleaders. They’re going to let everyone else go free, but him and Dima and Pete are going down for piracy. That’s what’s happening here. And now he’s not going to see his kids for fifteen years. They won’t know who he is. They’ll think he put his job before them. He’ll be an old man by the time he gets out, his kids will be strangers. And Nina, his partner, she isn’t going to wait for him. Why would she?
Frank starts pacing up and down the length of his cell. He lies down, gets back up, starts pacing again then stops, gets a book out, starts reading it but doesn’t take in the words. His boy will be twenty-eight, his girl will be in her thirties. He’ll be a stranger to them. He slams the book shut. He can’t concentrate, he jumps back down and starts pacing again, breathing hard, scratching his head and chewing his nails, tapping his foot, sitting down then standing, pacing and pacing and pacing and not finding anywhere in the cell that’s a good place to be. He’s close to the edge now. Getting close.
Yesterday he started making a deck of cards using a pen and paper and a razor blade he snapped from a shaver. He cut fifty-two squares and meticulously drew each card. He thought if he could play patience then he could get through the days here. And now he stops pacing and retrieves the cards from his shelf, lays them out and tries to focus. Boris looks over at him.
‘What you doing? What is this?’
‘Cards.’
The Russian jumps down from his bed. ‘Cards? What do you mean cards? No, no, no. Nyet, nyet. Kartser. You go to kartser. Me too.’
Kartser. It’s the cooler. The punishment cell. And Boris is saying if you get found with those then we’re all shafted, we’re all going to the cooler. So the cards get put away, ten o’clock comes along, the lights go down, the road starts cooking. Frank writes a note to Dima.
Fuck man I’ve been officially fucking charged with two-two-seven. Are you charged with two-two-seven? What is it? Is it Piracy?
Ten minutes later there are three thumps on the wall. Boris pulls in the sock and hands a note to Frank.
Yeah man we’re all being charged. Everyone, all thirty. This is a good thing, this means things are starting to happen man!
Frank’s kneeling on his bed when he reads Dima’s note. It takes a moment for its full meaning to sink in. He’s not being singled out. It’s not just him. He scrunches up the note in his hand and falls forward on the mattress then pulls the sheet over his head. He’s wasted so much energy fighting the fear, thinking it’s just him, but now the panic has passed. A minute later he’s gently snoring into the pillow.
A stranger is standing in the doorway of Roman Dolgov’s cell holding a clipboard. A chubby little man with a bushy moustache. He’s not in uniform, instead he’s wearing a shiny blue acrylic tracksuit.
‘You,’ he says. ‘Stand up.’
‘I’m sorry, who are you?’
‘Popov. I’m the governor. The new chief. Arrived today. I’m in charge. And you are …’ He glances down at his clipboard. ‘Dolgov. One of the pirates, yes?’
Roman stands up. ‘No. I’m not.’
The man appears surprised. He consults his clipboard again then looks up. ‘Oh, I think you are.’
‘Have you read the law? The law on piracy?’
The man scowls. ‘Of course I have. You think they let someone run a place like this if they don’t know the damn law?’
‘I think you’ll find that law is not applicable to us.’
The man’s mouth screws up. His nostrils flare. ‘I think you’ll find I don’t give a fuck what you think. You probably think you’re going to be a handful for me. Well let me tell you, I’ve dealt with a lot worse. You lot are pussycats compared to my usual stock.’
‘That platform was not a ship. It’s attached to the seabed. Legally you can only commit piracy on a ship.’
The man nods over Roman’s shoulder. ‘But those bars are bars, and really that’s all that counts.’
He smiles, and Roman sees the flash of a gold tooth.
‘And the law is the law, no?’
‘Look, arsehole, I really don’t want to have you here for a year before you go to the labour camp, but it’s not looking good for you. And as long as you’re here, I’ll be here too. Best if you get used to the hierarchy, eh?’
And with that he raps his clipboard with a pen and swings the door closed.
SIZO-1 has its own code of ethics. A prisoner never sits down on a cellmate’s bunk. But the first thing Popov does when he bursts into Andrey’s cell is to sit on his bed and bark, ‘Why the hell did you bring these people to us?’
‘I’m sorry,
who are you?’
‘I’m the governor of this place. I run this prison.’
‘Right.’
‘Why did you bring them here?’
‘To whom are you referring?’
‘The foreigners. You’ve got an American, a Brazilian, Argentines, Frenchies. Six British. Six! Why the hell bring them to Russia, eh?’
‘It was actually the authorities who brought them here.’
Popov snorts and rolls his eyes. ‘Well we don’t need that sort in Russia. Damn foreigners. What use do we have for Americans and all that lot, telling us what to do?’
A few minutes later Alex’s cell door opens. She stands up. A man walks in. He’s wearing a blue tracksuit. He looks around. Then suddenly his expression freezes, his eyes narrow, he points at the waste bin and explodes with rage. He’s screaming in Russian. Alex flinches. She looks down and sees some leftover bread she threw away. Her feet shuffle backwards but a moment later she pulls back her shoulders, takes a step forward and shouts, ‘I don’t speak Russian, okay? I don’t understand what you’re saying.’
The man sniffs. He jabs his finger at the waste bin and yells in her face. Alex feels her legs shaking. ‘It’s not a problem with my hearing,’ she says. ‘I just don’t understand Russian.’ The man lifts his chin and stands on his toes, trying to look down his nose at her, but he’s not tall enough. Instead he’s standing before her like a ballet dancer affecting the demeanour of a dying swan. He spins on the ball of his foot and flounces through the open door. A moment later it slams closed.
By the time the road is up and running, the arrival of the new governor is all anyone can talk about. The Russians say he’s been transferred from a prison in the north Caucasus, where he presided over separatist rebels from Chechnya and Dagestan. Rumour has it he ran a strict regime but got so many death threats he had to be moved.
THIRTEEN
It was a spring afternoon in 2010, three and a half years before commandos seized the Arctic Sunrise. BP’s Deepwater Horizon platform was gushing tens of thousands of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico every day,44 and a group of Greenpeace campaigners were meeting in a Turkish restaurant in north London to discuss their response to the unfolding disaster.