9th November
Quiet day. Exercise pit 7. Then around 4.30pm, the jail rights lady came for a visit. She had a one page typed paper on how to survive the move to St Pete. She said 90 or 95% chance we will go in plane or passenger train. But if we go by prisoner train, then we are fucked. The prisoner train takes 2 to 3 days. There are cells with four bunks in them, but they often put 20 prisoners in them. And they don’t let you out to go to the bathroom. I am praying…
TWENTY-FIVE
10th November
Just got confirmed by guard + doctor that transport will be all 30 of us and tomorrow. I can tell Boris is a bit upset with my departure. I guess I must have brought a distinct change and foreign flavour to the cell for the last 42 days. He enjoyed it I’m sure. For Boris time just drifts by, more or less like his life will.
What awaits us in St P and how long we’ll be there is the next venture.
Frank is emptying hoarded Valium tablets into the palm of his hand, wondering how the hell he’ll smuggle them into Kresty. The guards have just come round saying the move is happening tonight. He has to pack.
After thinking for a while he starts feeding the pills into the lining of his jacket.
‘No, no, no,’ says Yuri. ‘Bad, Frank, bad. They search. You go to kartser in Kresty. No no, put here.’
And Yuri points at a little flap in Frank’s trousers – a tiny pocket inside another pocket just above his knee.
‘Here. Better.’
Across the prison the activists are packing their bags, saying goodbye to their cellmates and writing final letters to friends and family, unsure if they’ll be able to communicate from St Petersburg, hoping Mr Babinski can get their messages to their loved ones despite Popov’s crackdown.
It’s 4 a.m. The guard is waiting at the open door. Time for Frank to say goodbye. He turns around and shakes his cellmates’ hands.
‘Boris, Yuri, thank you.’
‘Goodbye my friend Frank.’
‘Good luck in Kresty. We like very much having you here.’
Frank pumps their hands then he thinks, no, this isn’t enough. He goes to hug Boris but the Russian jumps back with a look of panic on his face.
‘Oh, stop being so damn homophobic!’ Frank throws his arms around Boris. Slowly the Russian raises his hands and pats Frank on the back. ‘Thank you,’ says Frank. ‘Thank you for welcoming me to your home. I’ll never forget how you treated me here. Never.’
Then Frank hugs Yuri. ‘Thank you for what you did for me. You taught me so much. I was very lucky to be put in with you.’
‘Thank you my friend,’ says Yuri, whose face is buried in Frank’s shoulder. ‘We will miss you.’
The activists are taken out floor by floor. For the last time they cross the yard. The lights of SIZO-1 are blazing around them. The doroga is cooking, the prison is living, it’s the same scene they faced when they arrived here seven weeks ago. Dima stops and turns around and faces the windows. He lifts a fist into the air and shouts a single word.
‘AUE!’
AUE. Pronounced ah-oo-yeah. It’s an abbreviation, it stands for Arestanskoe Urkaganskoe Edinstvo. Translation: Arrestees Criminal Union, the society of the incarcerated, a banned exclamation to identify yourself with the thieves in their struggle against the stars. A call to non-submission.
‘AUE! Vitaly, AUE! My cellmate, farewell, may you see freedom soon!’
And from the windows comes a wall of noise.
‘AUE!’
‘Go pirates!’
‘Your freedom must come!’
‘AUE!’
The Arctic 30 are leaving SIZO-1 with the solidarity of the prisoner community ringing in their ears. In single file the crew walk towards a waiting avtozak, their bags slung over their shoulders, their breath lit by spotlights as it freezes on the cold night air. They glance back to take a final look at Murmansk isolation prison.
Some of the crew take a moment to think about the cellmates they’re leaving behind, men who in many ways they’ve come to like and respect. Ivan, Boris, Yuri, Vitaly. Some of them are imprisoned because they’ve done bad things to good people, but in SIZO-1 they did what they could to help strangers survive.
The activists are slipping from Popov’s grasp, but what awaits them in St Petersburg? Can Kresty be as bad as their cellmates claim? And are they being taken to a place that will be their home for the next seven years of their lives?
Next to the bus stands an officer in a sharp camouflage uniform. ‘I am in charge until we hand you over in St Petersburg,’ he announces. ‘There are rules and I expect you to obey them. My men expect nothing less than your absolute co-operation. Our journey is by Stolypin. I cannot tell you how long it will take. As long as you recognise our absolute authority, you will be treated well. I see no reason why this should be unpleasant for any of us. Okay, let’s go.’
They’re loaded onto the bus, it pulls away and they drive through the gates. Behind them the shouts and screams from the windows die out and all they can hear is the crunch of tyres on grit as they leave SIZO-1.
The Stolypin is comprised of old-fashioned carriages hooked onto the back of a passenger train. The corridor goes down one side of the carriage, with cells along the other. There are no windows in the cells, just shelves, like benches, two rows of four in each. Only the top ones have enough headroom. The windows on the corridor are frosted glass with little gaps that the activists can see through. At one point they glimpse birch trees with snow on the ground, then they pass some buildings and they see the lights of a town.
It’s like Doctor Zhivago, Frank thinks. Everyone banged up on the train, and this carriage is pretty much from the same era. Maybe Julie Christie’s going to turn up.
They can touch each other, they can speak to each other without shouting, without a guard interrupting. For some of them, it’s a revelation.
The forty-year-old Argentine sailor Hernan Orsi pulls out a sheet of paper and a pen. ‘Okay,’ he shouts out, ‘here’s your chance to say who you want to play you in the movie of this shit. Me, I’m getting played by Benicio Del Toro. Colin, you’re Jeremy Irons.’
‘Jeremy fucking Irons? Are you kidding me?’
‘Andrey, you’re Gérard Depardieu.’
‘No no,’ someone crises out. ‘Andrey is Dustin Hoffman.’
‘Okay, Dustin Hoffman.’
It takes an hour for the train to agree on a full cast list – Frank is Jason Statham, Alex is Jennifer Connelly, Camila is Jennifer Garner, Sini is Naomi Watts, Phil is Jude Law, Kieron is Orlando Bloom and Dima is Jean Reno, the kindly assassin from the movie Léon. Pete is Jon Voight – ‘What? Again?’ – and Denis is ‘Sickboy in Trainspotting’ (aka Jonny Lee Miller, who was once married to Voight’s daughter Angelina Jolie, making Pete a sort of celebrity father-in-law to Denis).
The women are in cages together. They play games all day, they don’t want to sleep because they don’t know when they’ll be this close again. They hold hands and talk – about their lives back home, boyfriends and families. Camila has photographs with her, of her parents and her brothers and sisters. She shows them to the others, then she reads out a letter her father sent her, translating the words as she goes.