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

Gathered in the reception area are fourteen of the Arctic 30, including Pete, Frank, Phil, Roman and Dima. The rest of the men have been taken to St Petersburg SIZO-4, an isolation unit across town. The eight women are being taken to the all-female SIZO-5.

The activists at Kresty are processed, then led to their new cells. Dima steps through the door and puts down his pink bag. The door slams behind him. The smell of fresh paint fills his nostrils. A man gets up from his bunk and introduces himself as Vasily. He’s in his mid-thirties, well-built, very tall, wearing expensive sports gear.

‘Welcome.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Please, sit down.’

‘Thanks.

‘Would you like a cup of tea?’

‘Sure.’

Vasily bends down in the corner of the cell and produces an object that makes Dima visibly flinch. ‘Wow, that’s a big motherfucker of a tea boiler.’

‘Thank you.’

‘In Murmansk we had these little sort of coils that you put inside the glass. But that looks like a ten-watt massive fucking tea-boiling pot. Are you even allowed that in here?’

The man shrugs, ‘Of course not.’

Then, while the water is boiling, Vasily says, ‘Dima, we do not eat prison food here in my cell.’

‘No?’

‘No, we do not.’

He opens up the fridge – ‘We have a fridge in our cell?’ – and pulls out a French baguette, cuts off a slice, spreads a knob of butter over it, produces a jar of red caviar, spreads a spoonful onto the bread, closes the sandwich with a flourish and holds it out. And Dima thinks, no, we’re not in Murmansk any more.

Vasily tells Dima his story. He rented out a house to some students who grew nine marijuana plants, and the investigators say he knew all about it. He’s been in Kresty a little over a year, waiting for his trial on narcotics charges. But Dima knows enough about Russia to suspect that’s not what Vasily is really in for. The clothes, the food, the fridge, the attitude. This guy’s a bandit. Rich. Influential. Sorted. A post-Soviet killer-type bandit.

‘The cells were all painted two weeks ago,’ says Vasily. ‘Refitted entirely for you. Kresty has the doroga but you aren’t allowed to be part of it. The guards told us, “If you want to stay in these lovely cells with the Greenpeace people, behave.”’

Then he shows Dima an order book for the prison shop. It has five pages of food to choose from.

‘You order on one day and get it the next day. It works. For people like me anyway. And you too, Dima. You too.’

In a cell down the corridor Frank is sitting on his bunk and looking out through the window. He can see the onion domes of the cathedral through the bars. He imagines Trotsky being marched down the corridors. Many people died here, Frank knows that. Many political prisoners. He can feel the weight of history. The weight of hopelessness. Frank was brought up a Catholic and has a fondness for ornate churches. This cathedral in the middle of the prison looks beautiful, but utterly incongruous in its setting. He writes a note to the governor requesting a tour of the church and hands it to a guard.

Pete Willcox is sitting on the edge of his new bed, writing in his diary.

12th November

Got to the prison around noon, suspected and neglected and put away. The cell is about half the size and I have a roommate. So it sucks. The view though has a bit of a large canal out to the left and a Russian Orthodox church to the right. Reminds me of George’s Cross we put up on Amchitka. I am not doing very well. Is this shit ever going to end? My roomy Igor is twice my size but very nice. He has been here 18 months. I do not know what for. He is very hygienic. Tonight he looked at dinner and said it was garp [shit]. So he took the sardines, pulled out the bones, and made a very nice sardine and noodle dinner. We do not talk much. All in all, I would much rather be back in Murmansk.

12th November

This is the oldest and biggest prison in Russia and is more or less a museum. I had a nasty stand-off with the same guy who gave me shit on the train, while waiting for allocation of rooms. He blames me and Dima for the lengthy incarceration. Claims he never got a full legal briefing and claimed whatever we did turned to shit. He will send a complaint about it to IMAD [Greenpeace ships unit]. He made a comment about me never sailing with Greenpeace again. I think I prompted that by asking him why he was whingeing so much since he was the one who swore he’d never sail with us again. Some people are upset with the way it’s turned out and the campaign team in general.

Got packed to my cell and now sharing with Anton. He got a book out and pointed to the word ‘AMNESTIA’ indicating that a good chance for our release would be the December amnesty, which is a whole month from today, which I think I can easily handle. BUT with difficulty if we have continuing rumour see/saw. What we need is a date to work down to. Just saw long clip on Arctic 30 arrival in St P with the press saying it was like a Top Secret transport of high level personnel. The circus continues.

Across town, in a hallway at SIZO-5, the women are lined up in front of cell doors. The guard standing next to Sini slides a key into the lock and the door swings open. Sini takes a nervous step forward. The door closes. Two women look up from their bunks. Sini tries to smile. She holds out a hand but the women ignore it.

They’re both Russian, middle-aged. They look away. Sini sees a spare bunk, crosses the cell, sits down and stares at the floor.

Along the hallway Alex is in her new cell with three other prisoners. One of them is an old woman, tired and sad, short and plump with long white hair. Alex is sitting on her bed watching her. A key turns in the lock, the woman jumps up frantically, makes her bed then stands stiffly in front of it, waiting for inspection. The guard pokes his head around the corner then disappears. Twenty minutes later there’s a sound from the corridor, Alex stands up, the woman pushes her out of the way to get to her bed and straighten the sheet.

The woman sits on her bed. Alex sits down next to her. She has a dictionary and by pointing at words she can make herself understood. She asks the woman how she ended up here, and nervously, by pointing at words herself, the woman explains that she’s seventy-four years old. She says an intruder broke into her house, he kicked and punched her but she ran to the kitchen and pulled a knife from a drawer and stabbed him in the shoulder.

She’s looking at seven years. Her name is Marina.

Meanwhile Sini is lying on her bunk, watching her new cellmates. One of the women is floating around the cell, her eyes vacant like there’s nothing behind them. Sini stands up and walks to the window. The woman follows her, talking to herself in staccato Russian. She pokes Sini, shakes her head, wags a finger. Sini waves her away and sits back on her bed. But when she stands up again the woman shuffles behind her, shaking her head with disapproval and muttering to herself through tight dry lips. Sini unzips her bag and starts laying her meagre possessions on her bed, the woman rushes across the cell with a panicked expression, shaking her head wildly. Sini shoos her away. She lies on her bunk, pulls the sheet up over her head and holds herself tight. She can sense the woman standing over her. She can hear her breathing.

She’s taken to gulyat and shouts over the wall. ‘Camila! Alex! Faiza!’ But there’s no answer, so she shouts again. A guard opens the door of her box.

‘I don’t know why you’re shouting,’ he says. ‘There’s nobody there.’