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

‘Cigarette?’

Dima nods. They spark up, drag deeply, exhale over each other’s shoulder. Popov taps his cigarette over the ashtray and says, ‘You know the FSB?’

‘Yeah… I mean, of course I do.’

‘Tricky guys.’

‘Mmmm.’

‘Oh man , those guys are tricky. You really should listen to them, though, do what they ask. That’s the thing about co-operating with the investigators, it makes your life so much easier.’

‘Well—’

‘Don’t mess with them, Dimitri. For your own good, don’t be a hero. I know one of your guys is trying to be a hero, trying to take the blame for the attack on the platform. But really, what the fuck is he doing that for? I mean, everybody’s already giving evidence anyway, he should just relax. Yes, everyone’s singing now, telling the FSB who did what. No point in keeping schtum, eh? Everybody’s singing anyway.’

‘I’m not sure they are.’

‘Oh they are. Yes yes, they are my friend.’ He cocks his head to one side and sighs. ‘But I can end this for you. You do know that?’

Dima scratches his cheek.

‘Do you want me to end this for you, Dimitri?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I can amnesty you from the kartser right now.’

‘Okay.’

‘So let’s do it,’ says Popov breezily. He opens a desk drawer and takes out a piece of paper and a pen. ‘You write here that you’re really sorry you broke the rules. You say it was your lawyer who forced you to do it, and we can all move on.’

‘I can’t write that.’

‘Well okay, just write that you’re really sorry, you’ll never do it again and we’ll date it so it looks like you wrote it yesterday.’

‘That’s all?’

‘That’s all.’

Dima thinks about it for a moment. He wonders if this is a trick, but by now he just wants to get away from this guy, so he scribbles down a few words – ‘I’m sorry I broke the rules about letters’ – and signs it, then spins the sheet of paper around and pushes it back to Popov. The governor claps his hands together and declares, ‘Okay, that’s it. Take him back to his regular cell.’

Dima twists his head and looks over his shoulder at the guard, like, is this guy for real? But the guard gives nothing away, instead he lays a hand on Dima’s shoulder and a moment later he’s being marched back down the corridor. His pink bag is handed to him, he swings it over his shoulder and he’s taken back to his cell. Vitaly jumps up and throws his arms around him, but Dima breaks away. His heart is racing; the knot is like a rock in his stomach now.

‘What happened? Dima, what happened to you?’

Dima hunches over a mug in the corner of the room, stuffs a fistful of tea into it, fills it with water and drops the immersion heater in. He lights a cigarette then turns to face his cellmate.

‘Vitaly, you’ve heard of the Gestapo, right?’

‘Sure.’

‘And you know they were the bad guys?’

‘Sure I do. Everyone knows the Gestapo were the bad guys.’

‘Okay, good.’

And the next day a book is pushed through the feeding hatch in the cell door and drops onto the floor with a slap.

The Red-haired Horse .

Dima forces himself to read it that night. He’s curious to know more about a work of such renown. It’s set in the Soviet-era revolutionary period. Cossack traditions. Poorly written. The biggest piece of trash he’s ever read.

30th October

I guess I had better start a diary, to try and remember all this shit. Had another useless exercise period. Again it was drizzling and the exercise cell was half undercover, and the half that was still frozen was in the drizzle. So I stood in the corner and did the French Chairs. Better than nothing. At 1330 they said my lawyer was here so I went down to see Alexander. They had been waiting to see me since 10am. That really really sucks and it’s just ball-breaking. I wonder if they are mad at Alexander for something? Anyway, no major changes, Alex confirmed they are trying to split us apart. That’s not good. Alex also thinks they may cook up another charge for me. But he thinks even if they do, they will let me go with the other non-activists. I think he is bullshitting me and I should prepare for the worst. But realistically it is unlikely they will keep anyone in to Sochi. I heard Monday at the investigators that there is already talk of protests at the Olympics if we are still held. Not boycott, but protests. I do not think Putin is going to want that. Around 1630 they came to get Sasha [his cellmate]. I do not think it was because of me and I think it was because he did too much screaming. But the cell feels lonelier than usual tonight.

To understand Pete Willcox, you have to go back to his grandparents. [84] http://www.mensjournal.com/magazine/pete-willcox-high-seas-avenger-20140324

In 1952 Henry Willcox chaired the US delegation to a peace conference in China. One of the speakers was the communist premier Mao Tse-tung. When they returned to America, Henry and his wife had their passports confiscated [85] http://www.mensjournal.com/magazine/pete-willcox-high-seas-avenger-20140324 at New York harbour. He sued the United States government, eventually securing a five-to-four Supreme Court decision on the ‘right of freedom to travel’. But the case cost him his building company. He was voted out by the employees he’d given shares to.

The Korean War was raging, the Cold War was at its height, Senator Joe McCarthy was warning of ‘reds under the bed’ and the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) was holding hearings that resulted in the famous ‘Hollywood blacklist’. Three hundred writers and performers were boycotted by the movie studios based on their alleged communist sympathies. Even Charlie Chaplin.

On 6 March 1953, the day after Joseph Stalin died, Pete was born. His birth mother gave him up for adoption, but Henry’s son Roger Willcox and his daughter-in-law Elsie gave the boy a safe, loving home. Two years later Elsie was herself summoned to appear before the HUAC to account for her suspected involvement with an anti-war group. Elsie was in the process of adopting another boy, Mike, but the papers weren’t yet finalised. Fearing the summons could put the adoption in jeopardy, she took Pete and Mike and went underground for three months, hiding in a New England farmhouse. When the papers were eventually finalised, she surfaced and was issued with a subpoena to testify. [86] http://www.mensjournal.com/magazine/pete-willcox-high-seas-avenger-20140324

Elsie was pulled before the Committee. One of the congressmen said she’d betrayed her country. Elsie invoked her right to silence. Pete Willcox grew up believing that if you hadn’t been subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee then you hadn’t done much with your life. [87] http://www.mensjournal.com/magazine/pete-willcox-high-seas-avenger-20140324

He was five years old when he went on his first protest, against a new coal-burning power plant in Norwalk Harbor. Two years after that he was protesting outside Woolworth’s in solidarity with the young African-Americans staging sit-ins at racially segregated stores in the Deep South.

In 1965 Pete witnessed the culmination of the famous march from Selma to Montgomery. Selma was the county seat of Dallas County, Alabama. In the early 1960s the population was 57 per cent African-American, but only 1 per cent were registered to vote [88] http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis63.htm#1963selma1 (for whites, voter registration sometimes surpassed 100 per cent [89] http://www.crmvet.org/info/lithome.htm ). A campaign began to turn that around, but it was met with organised violent resistance by sections of the white minority, and by the mid-sixties Selma had become a focus for the national civil rights movement.