Don't Trust, Don't Fear, Don't Beg: The Extraordinary Story of the Arctic 30

by Ben Stewart

  GAZPROM, DON’T FOUL THE ARCTIC – FREE THE ARCTIC 30

  The referee looks up. It takes him a moment to understand what’s happening, then he blows his whistle and calls the players off the pitch. Andreas and his team decided that afternoon that if the game was interrupted they would immediately end their protest, so they climb up the ropes and pull in the banner. A few minutes later the game resumes, but not before the cameras have caught images that will soon be broadcast around the world. Including in Moscow.

  The next morning activists shut down every Gazprom station in Germany, locking themselves to the pumps.

  This campaign can’t go after Putin, but his oil company is fair game.

  FOURTEEN

  Dima is staring at the locked door of his cell, thinking, okay, there’s this door, it’s solid steel, twenty centimetres thick, the key to open it is the size of a shoe and I don’t have it. Now, I don’t want it to be closed. I want to get out of here. Sure. But if I keep banging my head against that door, that door is not going to open. But I will have a bloody head. So I’ll still have a closed door and a bloody head, as opposed to having a closed door and no blood. Okay, so that means it’s better not to bang my head against the door. And it’s the same with the situation I’m in, the piracy charge, the fifteen years, the fear, the panic. It doesn’t help me. And it doesn’t help to beg for freedom. It changes nothing, so I’m just going to let it go. I’m going to get my head down and do my time, in the knowledge that people on the outside are doing all they can to get me out of here and there’s absolutely nothing I can do to help them.

  Ne Ver’ Ne Boysya Ne Prosi.

  Don’t Trust Don’t Fear Don’t Beg.

  For some of the activists, their cellmates are invaluable tutors in the techniques vital to psychologically survive the ordeal of incarceration. The Russians sit them down on their bunks and explain how to avoid antagonising the guards, how to stay on the right side of the bosses in the kotlovaya cells, how to communicate with their friends, how to fill the days and the long nights, how to hold on to their sanity.

  Frank is sitting on his bunk with his head in his hands. His thoughts have been going round and round, faster and faster, and sometimes there’s no way to stop them. He’s thinking about his kids back home. If it’s fifteen years he may be a grandfather before he gets out. His girl is sixteen, his son is thirteen. He could even die in here, then he’ll never see his kids again. That could happen. That could actually happen. And if that happens …

  ‘Frank, no. Turma racing. Bad bad.’

  He looks up. It’s Yuri, the quieter of his two cellmates. Because he’s younger than Boris, Yuri is deferential to him. He rarely starts conversations but now he’s looking at Frank and speaking softly.

  ‘Turma racing. Bad, Frank. Bad.’

  Frank shakes his head. ‘What?’

  ‘Turma racing.’

  ‘What’s turma racing?’

  ‘This. Prison. This is turma. Russian word for prison. Racing. Your head. Round and round. Bad, Frank. Bad. Must stop. Not good.’

  And Frank nods. Yes, Yuri’s right. This is one of those moments when you’re lying there and the vortex of panic is starting to spin, sucking you in, pulling you down to a dark place. You thought this thing ten seconds ago and now you’re thinking it again and it feels even more frightening.

  Turma racing.

  In a cell down the corridor Dima can feel a tight fist of fear in his stomach. It’s been there since that first interrogation at the Investigative Committee, and in his darkest moments he can feel it clenching tight. Sometimes it gets too hard to bear, when he’s been thinking too much about that locked door that won’t be opening anytime soon, or when he’s been looking at the sky through the bars, thinking, will I ever see the sky without those bars? Will I ever see a sky that’s not in squares?

  In those moments he goes uyti v tryapki. It means ‘into the rags’. When the prisoners want to turn off the external world, when they need to turn away from their lives, when they want to turn their backs on everything, then they smother their bodies with all their loose clothes, their towel, everything they have. And under that pile of their earthly possessions they face the wall on their bunk and go uyti v tryapk. That’s what they call it, and Dima goes there often.

  Joy and depression flood the cells in turn, but their arrival can rarely be predicted. When Dima finds out there’s a well-stocked library here, he’s ecstatic, this is great, he can be here for years, he’ll read books during the day and at night he’ll be on the road. Fuck this, man. I can do this! Then he turns on the TV and sees Medvedev, the Prime Minister of Russia, and he’s saying, ‘Well, pirates or not, these are very serious criminals. They’re threatening the very livelihood of Russia.’ And suddenly Dima is in freefall, it really is going to be fifteen years, and for the next hour he’s turma racing.

  For Denis Sinyakov, the writings of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn serve as a vital crutch, giving him strength behind bars. The woman in charge of the library has read Solzhenitsyn herself and brings the great man’s books to Denis’s cell. His cellmate turns one of them over in his hands, perplexed.

  ‘You’re reading books about prison in prison?’

  ‘Where better to read them?’

  Denis saw Solzhenitsyn many times when he was alive, he photographed him, he covered his funeral. For Denis it’s fascinating to read how he survived the gulag, and now Denis is comparing the conditions and the rules across the decades. And he sees that nothing much has changed.

  Roman’s first cellmate told him, ‘At first you will count every minute here. Later you will count every hour. In three or four weeks you’ll be counting the days. Then you’ll count the weeks.’ And it’s true. Roman made a calendar and in the beginning he crossed out the days like Robinson Crusoe. At first he waited until the end of each day, and made a great ceremony of crossing it out. But now he finds he forgets.

  Phil is in the gulyat box, staring at the sky. He’s had a bad day, turma racing, and he scratches the words fuck them all on the wall. Afterwards he regrets it, he knows he needs to hang on to who he is. The next day he’s back and sees one of his friends has rubbed out the first word and written the word love instead. And Phil thinks, yeah, that’s the right attitude. That’s how to survive this place.

  The Greenpeace women, held alone on the second floor, have only their spoons, that pipe and each other. They’re telling themselves it can’t be fifteen years. Surely not. But then they see how they’re being portrayed on TV, and their minds race towards the edge. They take up their spoons and tap to each other, working out how old they’ll be when they’re released if they get the full fifteen years. Alex will be forty-two. She taps on the pipe.

  shit that means I can’t have children

  Camila taps back, her message reverberating along the pipe.

  i’ll be 36

  Alex taps out a reply.

  maybe we’ll have to have sex with a guard

  really?

  i’m joking cami

  well you do get two hours outside a day if you’re pregnant

  but they’re all quite ugly

  one of them is okay

  which one?

  the one who came to my cell today

  oh him

  yes

  really?

  no Alex, of course not. i’m not having sex with a guard to get pregnant

  okay me too

  good

  good

  FIFTEEN

  Frank’s lawyer reaches into his briefcase and pulls out a letter. ‘It is from your wife,’ he says.

  ‘From Nina?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Frank’s heart jumps. He snatches the envelope and turns it in his hands. It’s bulging, full of sheets of paper, and Frank Hewetson thinks it may be the most precious thing he’s ever held.

  It’s a Thursday morning and he and his lawyer are sat across the table from a senior officer from the Investigative Committee – a man memorable both
for a streak of petty authoritarianism, and for an unnaturally enormous forehead that is capped with a surf of receding jet-black dyed hair. Most of the investigators wear cheap acrylic suits and this individual is no different, swathed as he is in a brown affair that creases violently when he makes even the slightest movement. A period of accusatory gesticulating at Frank leaves him looking like a crumpled wreck.

  The man has just spent an hour telling Frank that the FSB now has proof of piracy, that many of the other activists have signed statements fingering Frank for responsibility, and that his only hope of avoiding many years in jail now lies with his revealing exactly who did what on the protest. Frank isn’t sure he should believe the man but he won’t incriminate his friends. Eventually the interrogation ends, and now Frank’s lawyer is handing him a letter from his wife.

  He never thought he’d feel such joy at being given a simple letter, but this is how it is since being locked up. He hasn’t been sleeping well, the road runs all night and Boris and Yuri are loaded on chifir until 6 a.m. every morning, pulling the ropes, banging on the wall, screaming through the window. Already Frank is savouring the moment he’ll lie on his bunk and run his thumb under the seal and pull out Nina’s note. He’ll read the letter slowly, savouring it, stretching out the time it takes to make it to the end. But just as he’s turning the envelope in his hands, the officer plucks it from his fingers and slips it into the inside pocket of his scratchy brown suit jacket.

  ‘No, you cannot have this. It must pass through our censors first. And you have not answered my questions.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You can read letter when you answer my questions about criminal invasion of oil platform.’

  ‘Just … come on, man. Give me back the damn letter.’ He rubs a hand over the fuzz on his scalp. ‘It’s from Nina. I miss her.’

  The investigator folds his arms, the suit bristles with static and multiple crease lines break out on its surface. He cocks his head and his eyebrows lift into the lower slopes of his forehead.

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s from my wife. Why can’t I have it?’

  ‘You are answering questions, not asking them. I am asking the questions.’

  ‘You have to be kidding me.’

  The officer sniffs, swings one leg over the other and narrows his eyes. ‘When you tell me who was in charge of the criminal gang which attacked the platform, you may have the letter.’

  Frank stares at him, at the thin mouth now rising at the corners as the man’s face takes on an expression of supreme self-satisfaction, at the sweep of hair that only starts somewhere near the crown, at the saggy neck skin hanging over the collar of his shirt. Frank’s lawyer is sitting next to him, two armed guards are standing behind the officer. And Frank thinks, shit, I’m fucked, I’m going down for fifteen years, it’s happening, there’s no way out, this is it.

  He leans forward, eyeing the cop, biting his lip and making angry breathing noises through his nose, fulminating, trying to stop his mind. He’s turma racing. He’s close to the edge, the vortex is opening up. He’s sucking in huge lungfuls of air through his flared nostrils, his knuckles are turning white as his hands grip tighter on the edge of the table. Then suddenly he hears a voice saying, ‘Frank, are you okay?’

  Frank looks around. ‘What?’

  His lawyer says, ‘Are you okay? You’ve gone white.’

  ‘No. No, I’m not okay. I’m fucking angry.’

  ‘You need doctor?’

  ‘Yeah, I need a fucking doctor.’

  ‘Really? You need doctor?’

  The guards edge closer, the investigator’s smile collapses into an expression of panic, he’s looking nervous, edging back from the desk. The cop clasps the top of his head with his hands and cries out in Russian. Frank doesn’t understand him but it sounds like an expletive. The officer jumps to his feet and throws open the window, then he starts manically fanning the air in front of Frank’s face with a copy of the criminal report into the boarding of the oil platform.

  Frank rolls his eyes and makes a heavy gurgling sound in his throat as one of his legs goes into a spasm. The cop drops the report and pulls a lever arch file from a shelf. He opens it and uses it to fan Frank, and the look in his eyes betrays his fear that one of the Arctic 30 could expire on his watch. He drops the file and lifts a telephone receiver. Orders are barked, more windows are opened, Frank’s chest heaves as he pulls a series of rasping laboured breaths. The door flies open and suddenly a doctor is standing in the middle of the room, his head turning from person to person as he searches for the patient. He rushes forward, applies a hand to Frank’s head, sticks his ear against his chest then looks at the cop and shouts, ‘Skoraya pomosh!’

  Ambulance.

  Frank is carried outside and loaded into the back of a Russian ambulance, one of the guards jumps in next to him, the siren blares and they accelerate through the gates of the Investigative Committee headquarters. Frank’s mind isn’t racing any more. Now he’s just confused. What’s going on? Where are they taking me? Then he thinks, well, at least I’m getting a trip outside.

  Five minutes later the ambulance skids to a stop outside Murmansk hospital, the door flies open and Frank is pushed into a wheelchair. The guard grabs the handles and bends down.

  ‘We go to see doctor.’

  ‘Yes, well, it is a hospital so I assumed that was next.’

  ‘But you no escape. Understand?’

  ‘I know I know, a move to the left or a move to the right is considered an attempt to escape and—’

  ‘I shoot.’

  ‘Yup, I got it.’

  ‘Okay, good.’

  ‘Yeah, don’t shoot me, please.’

  ‘A move to the left …’

  Frank twists his head back to look at him. ‘Yeah yeah, I know.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Yup.’

  He lifts the chair back, Frank grips the handles, the guard says, ‘Okay, let’s go!’ then the wheelchair surges forward and bursts through the front doors of the hospital.

  ‘You from London?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  They shoot across the foyer and take a corner at speed, two of the wheels lifting off the ground for a moment.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m from London.’

  ‘Depeche Mode!’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Yah yah, Depeche Mode. Depeche Mode number one. “Just Can’t Get Enough”. “Black Celebration”. Depeche Mode number one!’

  Now they’re careering down a corridor, the guard’s boots are making a slapping sound on the tiles as he powers forward with the wheelchair, doctors and patients are jumping into doorways, they flash past in Frank’s peripheral vision.

  The guard bends down to Frank’s ear. ‘You like Depeche Mode too?’

  ‘Er … Depeche Mode number one?’

  ‘Ha ha ha! Number one! When I’m with you baby, I go out of my head, and I just can’t get enough, I just can’t get enough.’

  They skid into a lift, up one floor, then along a corridor at breakneck speed before Frank is disgorged into the arms of a cardiovascular consultant. He’s immediately examined, the consultant expresses concern over Frank’s heart rate, Frank tries to explain that he’s been brought here by an armed joyrider who’s just threatened to shoot him. The consultant nods, he doesn’t understand, he doesn’t care, he takes blood, he orders Frank to strip and lie on a bench. Frank takes off his top and lies down, electrodes are applied to his chest, tests are conducted, the guard plays with the safety catch on his pistol, the doctor disappears then reappears with a sheet of results.

  ‘Your body is good,’ he says. ‘Maybe problem in head.’

  Instructions are issued to the guard, Frank is loaded back into the wheelchair with the electrodes still stuck to his chest. He’s spun around and launched into the corridor then into a lift, up one level then out into the psychiatric wing. They hurtle towards the door at the end, swerving to avoid a
nother wheelchair coming in the opposite direction, wires trailing from his chest, the guard crooning over his head.

  ‘… and I just can’t get enough, I just can’t get enough.’

  They brake outside the door, the guard knocks then pushes Frank inside. Murmansk hospital’s chief psychiatrist holds up a hand. He’s on the phone. He’s middle-aged with luscious grey hair, an expensive suit, a blue tie with red and white dots, a matching handkerchief in his top pocket. He finishes the call, motions to the guard to wheel Frank right in then fixes him with a superior stare.

  ‘What’s the problem?’

  ‘Well I’m not really sure. I was being interrogated by the FSB and …’

  ‘FSB?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You are one of the pirates?’

  ‘Well, no, we didn’t actually do it.’

  The doctor shrugs. ‘Of course.’

  ‘No, seriously. We didn’t.’

  ‘The human mind is capable of convincing us of many things, most of all the things we want to believe.’

  ‘Why am I here?’

  ‘You tell me.’

  ‘I felt unwell.’

  ‘Then I will give you something for it.’

  ‘I was being questioned by the FSB and I had a bit of a … I suppose it was a panic attack. Can you give me something to make me feel better?’

  ‘Where do you think you are? This is a hospital, that’s what we do.’

  ‘Well maybe, er … do you guys have Valium?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Can I, maybe … ?’

  ‘I will write you a prescription.’

  The doctor scribbles on a pad, rips off a sheet of paper and hands it to the guard. ‘You’ll get two a day from the prison doctor. Hope it helps.’ And with that the man drops back into the seat behind his desk and smiles with paternal assurance. The guard spins the wheelchair around, bursts though the door and accelerates down the corridor. And half an hour later Frank is back at SIZO-1, being led to his cell.