Simons and Kenyon leave Russia. Everybody else waits for the Kremlin to make its move.
The following day nothing happens, but rumours of an assault on the Moscow office are swirling like confetti. Now sources inside the Russian government are warning that the crackdown is imminent, that the office will soon be shut down and staff arrested. Instead of bringing this saga to a close, it seems there is an appetite in the Kremlin to escalate.
Late in the afternoon Mads Christensen taps the microphone on the video link between London and Copenhagen. He asks Ben Ayliffe and the head of the media team to get on a secure line.
‘Look,’ he says, ‘we’ve got a source, a really good one, someone who knows what’s happening at the top level. I don’t want to say who this is, and you don’t need to know, but they’re telling us it’s going to happen. Maybe as soon as tomorrow. Office shut down, bank account closed, staff picked up by the FSB. We need to do something. Something that makes them stop and think. We need to make some kind of intervention so the PR hit they think they’ll take – inside and outside Russia – makes the FSB think again.’
Ben Ayliffe and his colleague lock themselves in a room with a bag of pastries and a pot of coffee and thrash through ideas. Ayliffe leads the team organising demonstrations, vigils and petitions around the world. He’s a twelve-year Greenpeace veteran with a passion for cricket, bird watching and shutting down polluting infrastructure using peaceful direct action. It should have been him on that ship but he hurt his back and Dima took his place.
Just over an hour later they have something for Christensen. It’s a draft of a letter to Putin from Kumi Naidoo. Not much in itself, but this letter has a twist. It includes a serious offer by Naidoo to swap places with the Arctic 30.
Unlike the world leaders with whom you are more used to convening, I would not carry with me the power and influence of a government. Instead, I would come equipped only as the representative of millions of people around the world, many of them Russian, whose fervent wish is to see an early end to the continued imprisonment of the brave and peaceful men and women held in Murmansk.
Were our friends to be released on bail, I offer myself as security against the promise that the Greenpeace International activists will answer for their peaceful protest according to the criminal code of Russia.
I appreciate the risk that my coming to Russia entails. Last year I was part of a peaceful protest that was identical in almost every respect to the one carried out by my colleagues. In coming to Russia, I do not expect to share their fate, but it is a risk I am willing to take in order to find with you that common understanding.
‘But we need to send it tonight,’ Ayliffe tells Mads Christensen. ‘Moscow is four hours ahead and we need to hit the morning news there.’
Christensen rings off and reads through the letter, then he calls Kumi Naidoo.
‘Mads.’
‘Kumi, hi.’
‘Hi.’
Silence.
‘Mads, are you there?’
‘Yeah. So, er… we have an idea.’
‘Go on.’
‘Well, we’re trying to find something so morally powerful that the FSB can’t shut us down, right?’
‘Right.’
‘And we think… we think maybe you could offer yourself up. In exchange for the others, I mean. It would sort of be sacrificing you on the altar of saving the Russian office. I mean, I know it’s crazy, but what do you think?’
And Naidoo comes straight back. ‘Sure.’
‘Really?’
‘Yup.’
‘Are you absolutely sure about this? Because once you say yes, they could call our bluff. You know that?’
‘It’s fine, let’s do it. I’ve actually been thinking the same thing for a while. I’ve been playing it over in my head for a week. I’m the boss, the buck stops with me. If I could swap with those guys in jail I would. Let’s do it.’
Kumi Naidoo has been jailed before. When he was fifteen years old he joined the national student uprising against apartheid rule in South Africa. Kids across the country were walking out of school and taking to the streets to protest racist rule. Naidoo became a leader of the uprising, he was jailed, released, and forced to live underground. Eventually he had no choice but to leave the country. His offer to take the place of the thirty is a serious one.
The letter to Putin is delivered to the Russian ambassador in The Hague, the campaign sends out a press release, and the next morning it’s a major story in the Russian media. Putin’s spokesman says the President has read the letter but is powerless to intervene in Russia’s independent judicial system. Around the world – but most importantly in Russia – it’s known that Kumi Naidoo has made a personal offer to Putin to take the place of the Arctic 30.
The campaigners wait. Every time a new Skype message pops up from the Russian office it’s quickly scanned as they look for news that the security services are raiding the Dance Hall. But nothing. No raid, no arrests. It takes another day for the Kremlin to react to the letter. But when they do, they play a card from the bottom of the deck.
‘Okay, so the FSB found drugs on the Arctic Sunrise.’
‘What?’
‘Drugs. It’s on the Investigative Committee website. Can you give us a comment? We’re going live with it on the evening news.’
Tatiana Vasilieva, a 23-year-old press officer, lowers the phone and looks around. It’s late, the Dance Hall is emptying, she was about to leave for home herself. The journalist on the end of the line is still speaking, she can hear his voice buzzing from the receiver. And then she hears another phone ringing, and another one. A moment later every phone in the room is ringing and her colleagues are reaching into pockets and bags for their mobiles.
‘I’m sorry, say that again.’
‘I said do you have a statement? We’re going live in ten.’
‘What kind of drugs?’
‘Illegal drugs. That’s what they’re saying.’
Seconds later the BBC’s Moscow correspondent tweets the news. The Skype groups explode with messages.
Aaron Gray-Block: Daniel Sandford @BBCDanielS Russia’s Investigative Committee now saying ‘poppy straw’ and ‘morphine’ found on the @gp_sunrise
‘Jesus Christ,’ Mads Christensen mumbles to himself, staring at his screen. ‘This is bad. This is very bad.’ He unmutes the video link to London and taps the microphone. Eight heads look up. ‘You lot seeing Skype? The Russians are saying they’ve found drugs on board the Sunrise. They’re saying they found morphine and poppy straw.’
Faces duck below laptop screens then surface a moment later with wide, fearful eyes.
‘Holy shit,’ says Ben Ayliffe, shaking his head. ‘That has to be bullshit.’
‘It’s a smear,’ says Christensen. ‘Total bullshit. Morphine and poppy straw.’
‘I mean, poppy straw, that’s crap. There’s no way they found poppy straw on that ship.’
Silence, then Christensen says, ‘What is poppy straw?’
‘Er.’
‘Ummm.’
Ayliffe types the words into Wikipedia, scans the page then looks up at the video screen.
‘Oh man, it’s opium. Raw opium stalks.’
‘Who the hell sails on a ship with raw opium stalks?’
Christensen taps ‘Greenpeace’ and ‘drugs’ into Google News and sees the story is already getting pick-up. Western right-wing media outlets – many of whom have done nothing to cover the story of the Arctic 30 until now – are pouncing on the claim and posting their first dispatches since the arrests, with the prefix ‘BREAKING NEWS’. He unmutes the microphone on the video link.