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

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.

‘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.