‘Dear Bochi,’ she says. ‘That’s what he calls me. Bochi. It means bold. He says I was bold when I was born. Okay, so… Dear Bochi, The things you are fighting for are worth the risk. You cannot imagine how proud your mother and I are, seeing how you’ve grown up with the values, the solidarity and the humility we tried to raise you with. When people ask me how I’m doing, I tell them I’ve seen the most beautiful flower in the world, and she is mine.’
Alex and Sini stare at Camila then throw their arms around her.
In Amsterdam Faiza’s mother Mimount is trying to process the move, fearing the worst. ‘I wondered why they were being transferred to St Petersburg. I was sceptical, I was doubtful of the Russians’ intentions, and there was absolutely no information on why this was happening. I was scared it might be bad news. I was afraid, afraid that they were being taken to a permanent detention centre. I feared for my daughter. I wanted to take her place because I feared for her.’
It’s Anthony’s birthday, and for a present Frank has given him a Valium tablet. It takes the top of his head off. He sleeps for sixteen hours straight. When he wakes up he tells Frank it was one of the best birthday presents he’s ever had.
This Stolypin has a toilet, and visiting it is a joy for some of them. They get to see all of their friends, the people they never spoke to in prison. As they walk down the long thin corridor in front of a guard, hands poke through the bars, so they touch them as they walk, like a rock star running down the front row at a concert.
But for some of the thirty, the journey is a chance to air frustration, even anger, at Greenpeace. Some of the activists think they’re only in jail because of a monumental internal mistake. They’re hurting and they have something to say. It’s the first time they’ve all been in such close proximity since coming off the Sunrise and there’s tension between Frank and two others. They’re pointing the finger at him and Dima.
Frank was the co-ordinator of the protest, Dima was the lead campaigner on the ship. Ultimately the action was their responsibility. Now Frank is in a compartment with two guys who want to know why the piracy charge wasn’t predicted. The argument goes back and forth. Nobody’s shouting, but this is heavy.
‘You dumped us in this shit, Frank. You need to face up to what you did. You were responsible for the action, you were in charge, this is your fault. You and Dima, you’re to blame. Bringing a bunch of activists to Russia, messing with the FSB. What did you think was gonna happen?’
‘What do you mean I brought us to Russia? We weren’t in Russia, it was international waters. Everyone knew the score.’
‘Nobody knew. That’s the point, isn’t it? Nobody knew because nobody stopped to think how heavy it could get. And that was your job.’
It’s a line that’s been running in the global media – that Greenpeace should have known an action on a Russian oil platform would be met with a legal hammer. Four weeks ago Dominic Lawson – the son of Lord Nigel Lawson, the UK’s most prominent climate change sceptic – took a full page in the Daily Mail, the world’s most read newspaper, to eviscerate the organisation.[109]
I wonder what they had imagined would be the reaction of the Russian coastguard, defending the security of what in any waters would be a highly sensitive installation. They had been warned to back off in the most explicit terms and told that any attempt to scale the exploration rig would be regarded as a hostile act… Faced with the unenviable imaginary choice of a government run by Vladimir Putin and one run by Greenpeace, I would vote for the former every time. Putin might be a vengeful and autocratic ruler in the Russian tradition; but he is not part of a gang of well-meaning fools seeking to drive mankind back into pre-industrial poverty.
In a film for the hugely influential Sunday Times newspaper entitled ‘Should we blame Greenpeace?’[110] the commentator Rod Liddle said:
So Greenpeace authorised their people to clamber aboard a Russian gas installation which the Russians consider a security installation, and Greenpeace are surprised the Russians didn’t accept all of this in high spirits. What on earth was Greenpeace thinking?
Liddle then interviewed the former Russian presidential adviser Alexander Nekrassov.
‘Do you have any sympathy for the Greenpeace people?’ he asked.
‘I think the Greenpeace people made one crucial mistake,’ Nekrassov replied. ‘They should have realised the gravity of the situation. They should have warned all the people involved that this is not an easy thing, it carries a lot of danger here. I feel sorry for the people who went there without knowing what they were in for.’
Similar stories have appeared in newspapers and on television around the world. It’s a line that Dima heard on state-run TV in his cell at SIZO-1. And he’s picked up some hostility from a few of the other activists, a sense that because he’s Russian he should have known how the regime would react.
But from where Dima is sitting, this is the third time he’s been arrested in the same waters, going back to 1990. A year before the Sunrise was stormed, he was one of the people who protested at the same rig. Putin was president back then and they weren’t touched by the authorities. Dima wasn’t alone thinking Russia had a fairly sane and rational government. Granted, there were voices saying Putin was mad, but they were far from the mainstream, closer to a lunatic fringe. At worst Dima expected the crew would be detained for a few days aboard the ship after the action. And even in jail he stands by that expectation, given what he knew then.
In Frank’s compartment the argument is still raging.
‘Come on, Frank. When we had a legal briefing about what the charges could be, I’m not sure piracy was even mentioned.’
‘It fucking was.’
‘Well, even if it was, it was never said to us like it was a serious risk.’
‘Because it wasn’t. Because we weren’t going to commit piracy. You can’t commit piracy on that platform, it’s attached to the seabed, it’s not a ship. Jesus, guys, I know we’re in the shit here. I know we’re all hurting, but please, give me a break with this blame game.’
‘Well, if it wasn’t a serious risk then what are we all doing here?’
The row peters out to silence, but the tension hangs unresolved as the train rattles through the night.
Alex’s cousin has sent her a Russian–English translation booklet and it has a section devoted to romance. She pulls it out on the prison train. It has the Russian translation for phrases including I would die without your love and I like it when you touch me here and I want you. Alex, Sini and Camila shout out these lines at the guards then collapse in laughter. But the guards don’t smile. They stare ahead with concrete expressions.
Twenty-four hours have passed. The head of the guards tells them they’re close now. For some it’s a moment of huge relief. So they’re not being taken to a transit prison. This isn’t the Stolypin journey of their nightmares. Then the realisation dawns that they’re hours away from being split up. Alex and Sini shout out, ‘We love you’ and, ‘Wherever you go, stay strong!’
The train pulls into St Petersburg and the carriages fall silent. The guards take them out, one cell at a time. They have to jump across the track from the train to the open doors of an avtozak. Sini and Alex are pushed into a compartment together. Alex zips up her purple ski jacket and reaches out for Sini’s hand. They squeeze as tightly as they can.
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