‘Poppy straw anyone? What is it? Is it medicinal, or is it a recreational drug? We need to know as soon as possible.’
Laura Kenyon: In Russian this phrase that Google translates to ‘poppy straw’ is the same as what we usually mean in English if we say heroin. i.e. referring to the illegal kind of heroin.
‘Oh shit,’ says Christensen. The Room of Doom looks up. ‘Okay, so Laura’s saying the FSB are accusing the Arctic 30 of being on heroin.’
‘Whoa!’
‘Yup.’
They say a lie can go around the world before the truth has even got its boots on, and now the team is in a race against time to catch up with the FSB’s smear and challenge it. The Western media hasn’t used the ‘H’ word yet, but it’s only a matter of time, and the implications for the thirty could be huge. Mads Christensen has a global campaign rolling here, but the FSB is trying to derail it with undiluted bullshit and the media is falling for it.
The campaign hits every Skype group out there, reaching hundreds of people, urgently demanding evidence that the Russian claim is a smear. Seconds later they’re told that morphine is obligatory on all Dutch ships and that it’s kept in the captain’s safe. It would have been illegal for a Greenpeace ship not to carry morphine. But what about the opium? Within a minute they’re being told that the ship was searched by Norwegian drug sniffer dogs before it sailed for the Prirazlomnaya, and a minute after that they’re sent the certificate to prove it. Unless someone on the crew arranged a rendezvous with a poppy straw dealer in the middle of the Arctic Ocean, they can prove the drugs story is a lie.
Christensen’s London-based media team bashes the information into a press release. In Amsterdam Daniel Simons watches the words appearing in real time on a Google doc and gives them legal sign-off as each sentence appears. They’re desperate to get something out before the media accuses their friends of stashing heroin on the ship. Then twenty minutes after the FSB released its statement Greenpeace are sending out theirs, rebutting the smear in forensic detail and castigating the FSB for stooping so low.
Soon enough the media is running their corrective. Christensen types the words ‘Greenpeace’ and ‘drugs’ into Google News and reads reports saying the only drug found on the Sunrise was medical morphine. The tone of the story has changed. The FSB is being ridiculed. Russian Greenpeace campaigner Vladimir Chuprov – who’d be one of the first campaigners to be arrested in a raid – is quoted saying, ‘Next they’ll say they’ve found a pink zebra on our ship, or maybe an atomic bomb.’
Pavel Litvinov – Dima’s father – is in no doubt about who’s behind the smear. He’s been expecting it. He’s surprised it took them so long. ‘I knew they would play with all these things, with drugs, that they would make it up even if they didn’t find something. It was clear the command would come from Putin that this has to be done. Whatever they want, they will find. So I always had a fear they would say drugs.’
By the end of the day the story has died down. Mads Christensen comes on the video link. ‘Well done everybody,’ he says. ‘I have to say that was extraordinary work. They tried to kill us today, but we stood up to them, we fought back and we survived. Today was a big day. Something important happened. This wasn’t about drugs, this was about something even bigger. We’re having a conversation with the FSB. This is what’s happening, I think. We do something and they react to it, they do something and we react. This drugs thing is clearly a response to the Kumi letter. We sent it yesterday, then today they say they found heroin. Putin got the letter. That was his reply.’
9th October Wednesday
Just seen 20:00 news where the investigation team have claimed to have found ‘narcotics’ on Arctic Sunrise. Morphine of course. In the ship’s hospital in fact. They are trying every trick to use the black arts of propaganda against us. If I wasn’t banged up I’d be laughing.
A second day of global action is organised by the global campaign team. More than one hundred events are held in thirty-six countries involving nearly ten thousand people – everywhere from Mount Everest to Bangkok to Naples. The team in Murmansk plans a one-person vigil in the city centre, with a protester posing in a purpose-built cage made from cardboard and tape. The cage is stored in an enclosed yard at the rented building hired by the team as a headquarters.
Tatiana Vasilieva, the Moscow-based press officer, has travelled to Murmansk to help organise the protest. Under Russian law a demonstration involving more than one person requires a licence from the government[77] – a licence she’ll never be granted. The Greenpeace plan is to put a lone protester inside the cage in front of the court building. The journalists attending the next appeal hearings will then see the person in the cage. But on the morning of the protest another press officer rushes into her room and sits on her bed, shaking.
‘What happened?’ asks Vasilieva. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘The cage has been stolen.’
‘What?’
‘An hour ago when the team arrived to collect the cage it was gone. We spoke to the security guard of the building. He gave us the video footage from the CCTV cameras. We watched it and…’
‘What? What does it show?’
‘There were six men, all dressed in black and wearing masks. These men, you can see them, they’re scaling the fence and moving in a straight line. Then they pick up the cage and carry it across the courtyard. They’re either local freaks or the FSB. They have to be.’
11th October Friday
Got notice of my appeal being held on 15th Oct. Boris and Yuri are playing backgammon. I can’t do that game. Just found out Boris has another 8–12 years to go but only 2 months left in this facility. Yuri says he has another 5–7. Puts things a wee bit into perspective.
12th October Saturday
I wonder what Nina [his partner] and the kids are doing this weekend. I really miss them. Nell [his daughter] is going through such a growth of maturity, ability and humour that I just can’t help but feel I’m missing out on wonderful times. Every Saturday I miss is a Saturday I don’t get to cycle down to Roundwood Park with Joe [his son] and Pluto [the dog]. It gets me deep down that these days are slowly slipping away from us. I love those two kids so very deeply. I’m so scared at how much they will seem to have grown + changed by the time I get home. These are low moments.
Since arriving at SIZO-1 Frank has examined every aspect of his life. He’s raked over the decisions he took over many years, and reconstructed how he ended up on that ship. He wonders if he might have taken a different path. He remembers details of his childhood for the first time in decades. And he thinks about his father. Was he trying to live up to his dad’s reputation? Is that why he joined the ship and sailed to the Prirazlomnaya? He often asks himself the question. He always envied his father because he had a cause, and environmental protection became Frank’s cause. It gave him strength to know what he was doing was important.
Michael Hewetson would have been a formidable supporter of the campaign to free his son, had he still been alive. He was one of the legendary commandos dropped behind enemy lines the night before D-Day to secure Pegasus Bridge – the key strategic goal on which depended the success of the Allied invasion of Europe. The nineteen-year-old was in the thick of brutal battle for ten days before being wounded and shipped back to England, patched up and sent back to Europe, where he fought in the Battle of the Bulge and the crossing of the Rhine.