Ben Stewart - Don't Trust, Don't Fear, Don't Beg

wow

omg

The women tap to each other all day. And when they’re not tapping, they’re dancing to the music channel on their TV sets. There’s an evening show called Bridge in Time – a compilation of timeless tunes from the sixties onwards. The women throw themselves around their cells, drumming on the radiator pipe and thumping the walls to the Beatles, the Stones, Led Zeppelin and Michael Jackson. Anything to feel a connection with other human beings.

The highlight of the day is the gulyat . Every time it gives them a surge of energy to actually talk to each other. They have to shout over the wall, but that hour can be joyful. They pull themselves from their fear and depression by sharing any good news they’ve heard. They’ve been told that people across the world are standing up for them. Their lawyers and the consuls from the embassies have told them their fate is a global news story. And when they share all this they feel something electric in the air. It’s pride, and it flows over the walls.

Even now, facing perhaps fifteen years in this place, they tell each other they don’t regret the protest. They know their friends on the outside are fighting for them. They know they did the right thing. ‘And if we did the right thing,’ Camila shouts out, ‘then what can go wrong?’

She’s twenty-one years old, the oldest of six children, and apart from holidays in Uruguay and a trip to the USA, this is her first time abroad. Camila is classically attractive with olive skin and long brown hair – an archetype of Latin America. On her first day in this place the guards confiscated the silver ring she wore in her nose. She grew up watching National Geographic documentaries on Argentine television, spending hours in front of the screen staring at the images of animals, savannah and rainforest. For years before joining the Sunrise she would lie awake wondering when she’d see for herself the creatures and lands featured in those programmes.

A year ago she was working in a fashion outlet, selling clothes to rich women. She hated that. Later she worked as a receptionist at an English language institute. Then suddenly the call came in from Greenpeace. They needed climbers for a direct action protest in the Arctic. Camila told her boss she was leaving. ‘Sorry, there’s something I need to do. One of those once-in-a-lifetime things. I quit.’

Frank is standing in a small room with brown walls in the depths of Murmansk SIZO-1. In front of him is a Russian man dressed in full camouflage fatigues, a peaked military hat and heavy eighteen-hole combat boots. The man is wearing Reactolite glasses, the ones that turn into sunglasses when it’s bright. At his side, swinging from a finger, is a thick black baton.

He is the prison’s resident psychologist.

Frank bites his lip and eyes the stick then slowly, cautiously, he lowers himself into a chair opposite the shrink. The guy looks like he’s about to be deployed to Afghanistan. Frank’s thinking, please, my friend, this is not a good look for a psychologist. You need to do something to soften your image.

The man sits down, lays the truncheon on the table, shuffles some papers then looks up. Frank scratches his nose. The man nods.

‘You happy?’

‘Not really.’

‘You scared?’

‘Sometimes, yes.’

‘You want to… to harm Frank?’

‘Do myself in? No. Not yet.’

‘You like food here?’

‘It’s okay,’ says Frank. ‘I’m still alive.’

‘People in cell, they good?’

‘They’re fine. Fine.’

The man nods. He jots down some notes then points at Frank and says, ‘You, two-two-seven.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Two-two-seven,’ says the psychologist.

‘That’s a cell?’

‘You, two-two-seven.’

‘It’s a non-smoking cell?’ asks Frank. ‘I said I wanted a non-smoking cell.’

‘Two-two-seven. Smoking? Smoking?’ And the psychologist sucks on an invisible cigarette then points at Frank.

Frank shakes his head. ‘No, no. No cigarette. I want a non-smoking cell. Are you saying two-two-seven is non-smoking?’

‘Two-two-seven.’

‘Yes, my new cell. Non-smoking. Let’s go and look at it, let’s go and look at two-two-seven right away.’

‘Go?’

‘Yeah, let’s go to the cell.’

So off they go, the psychologist leading Frank down the corridor, his baton swinging at his waist, his boots stomping into the floor, the sound echoing down the hallway. But then he stops outside Frank’s cell, the one he’s just left.

‘No no,’ says Frank. ‘This is not two-two-seven.’

‘Uh?’

‘Not two-two-seven. Two-two-seven is downstairs.’

He points at Frank. ‘You. Two-two-seven. You.’ He lifts the baton and jabs it into Frank’s stomach, prodding him backwards until he’s inside the cell, then the psychologist pulls the door closed. Frank’s nostrils fill with the smell of cigarette smoke and wet laundry. The sound of stomping boots fades to silence. He stands in the middle of his cell, scratching his head, confused.

A few hours later a swarm of officials bursts in – five guards, a guy in a suit, a translator. And the one in the suit says, ‘You must take this.’ It’s a charge sheet, it says he’s officially accused of piracy under Article 227 of the Criminal Code of Russia. And right then Frank realises what the psychologist was trying to tell him.

He feels exposed. Very, very exposed. The psychologist was telling him he needs to get mentally prepared because piracy is ten to fifteen years. Frank is sure the guy was pointing at him and him alone, that he’s being singled out for Article 227. They found his laptop, he thinks, and they probably found the flash card with the protest plan on it. He left it on the ship. He downloaded everything from the laptop onto the stick and taped it under the table in his cabin. But it’s the FSB, isn’t it? The KGB. They’ve found it, of course they have. Oh Christ, why did he even keep that memory stick? Why didn’t he just throw it through a porthole into the sea? Then he remembers why, and the realisation makes him punch the wall and stifle a sob. That memory stick. That stupid fucking memory stick. He’s going to lose contact with his kids because of that damn memory stick, and the only reason he didn’t throw it overboard was because he had all his receipts copied onto it and he thought his boss would bollock him if he came back from Russia and couldn’t do his expenses.

Yeah, the FSB have found it. And they’ve probably gone on Google and worked out that he’s occupied oil rigs across the world. And now they’re going for the ringleaders. They’re going to let everyone else go free, but him and Dima and Pete are going down for piracy. That’s what’s happening here. And now he’s not going to see his kids for fifteen years. They won’t know who he is. They’ll think he put his job before them. He’ll be an old man by the time he gets out, his kids will be strangers. And Nina, his partner, she isn’t going to wait for him. Why would she?

Frank starts pacing up and down the length of his cell. He lies down, gets back up, starts pacing again then stops, gets a book out, starts reading it but doesn’t take in the words. His boy will be twenty-eight, his girl will be in her thirties. He’ll be a stranger to them. He slams the book shut. He can’t concentrate, he jumps back down and starts pacing again, breathing hard, scratching his head and chewing his nails, tapping his foot, sitting down then standing, pacing and pacing and pacing and not finding anywhere in the cell that’s a good place to be. He’s close to the edge now. Getting close.

Yesterday he started making a deck of cards using a pen and paper and a razor blade he snapped from a shaver. He cut fifty-two squares and meticulously drew each card. He thought if he could play patience then he could get through the days here. And now he stops pacing and retrieves the cards from his shelf, lays them out and tries to focus. Boris looks over at him.