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

Camila turns the key in the hotel door and cries, ‘I can open the door! I can open the door! And I can sleep with the door unlocked!’ She pushes through the door into the hotel room, Sini bounces after her and the two of them punch the air and whoop. They run to the window and disappear behind the curtains. The fabric jerks and bulges as they wrestle with the window fixture, then the window opens and Sini shouts out into the street.

‘Freedom!’

And Camila cries, ‘We are free!’

Then Camila’s head pops out from behind the curtains and she says, ‘Hey, maybe we should do a banner hang here.’

And a voice from the corridor says, ‘You can’t do a banner hang, you only just got out of jail!’

Sini jumps onto one of the beds and Camila joins her. They’re bouncing from bed to bed, whooping and screaming until Sini is laughing so much she falls off and rolls onto the floor and Camila collapses onto her back and shouts, ‘I feel like a three-year-old child!’

More people are piling into the room. A bottle of champagne is produced. Sini says she hasn’t drunk alcohol in five years. ‘But this is the day to break it.’ She takes the bottle, pops the cork and everybody’s arms go into the air in celebration, and just at that moment the Italian activist Cristian D’Alessandro waltzes into the room sporting a grin the width of a dinner plate.

‘I just took a shower,’ he says, ‘and I’m a free man!’

22nd November (Friday)

THAT’S IT – JUST GOT GIVEN 5 MIN WARNING – I’M BEING RELEASED…

Turma racing over.

Frank feels joy surging through his body, to the tips of his fingers and toes. It washes over him like a cleansing shower. He takes a deep breath, smiles and starts packing his bag, but as he glances at Anton his cellmate looks back at him and Frank can see he’s wishing it was him. Outside his cell the governor of Kresty is standing in the corridor, watching him through a gap in the open door. The man says something in Russian to the guard, and the guard turns to Frank and says, ‘You put in a request to see the cathedral?’

Frank looks up.

‘What?’

‘You asked to see the cathedral.’

‘Yeah. Yeah I did.’

‘You are religious?’

‘I’m a Catholic, sort of. But I was so amazed by the architecture here. You have to understand that my cell window in Murmansk looked out over razor wire and a guard tower. Here it looks out onto this wonderful dome.’ He grins. ‘Shame I’ll never get to look around.’

‘But you put a request in?’

‘Uh huh.’

‘The governor, he wants to know if you still want to see it?’

Frank stands up straight.

‘The cathedral?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well I’d love to, my friend. But I’m afraid I’m leaving you now.’

‘You want to go, before you leave?’

Frank glances at the governor. He wants to get out of this place as soon as he can, it’s finally happening, some nights he thought he’d be in prison for fifteen years and now he’s standing on the cusp of freedom. But still he hears himself saying, ‘Okay, sure, yeah, let’s go see the cathedral.’

‘Finish packing. I take you.’

Frank stuffs his possessions into the bag, zips it closed, swings it over his shoulder and nods. ‘Let’s do it. Let’s see the church.’

They walk him down hallways and up stairways until they’re standing before a grand wooden door. He walks through it, then they pull the door shut behind him and let him wander around, all alone. He’s surrounded by icons. A gold altar. Huge silver candelabras. And all inside a prison, like booty. It’s absolutely beautiful. Stunning, he thinks. He can see the faded colours of a fresco. He looks up and sees the entire working of the bell system. The silence is odd. The size of the space feels strange to Frank. He hasn’t felt space like this for months. It’s disorientating, like it’s hard to balance and he could fall over. It smells of dust, decay and dry, rotting timber. Every so often the door creaks as the guards look in and check he isn’t stealing something. And eventually they tell him his time is up.

The moment has come for Frank Hewetson to leave jail. He draws a deep breath and nods. He takes a last look, runs a hand through his blond hair then strolls over to the guards. They pull the wooden door closed behind him, he slaps one of them on the back and says, ‘Okay, brother. Let’s do it.’

Meanwhile, Pete Willcox is in a car on the way to the hotel. And he’s worried. He thinks he’s about to be blamed for what happened. He’s as nervous as he is excited. Nervous about meeting the others. A captain’s first job is the safety and welfare of his or her crew. By sailing them to the Prirazlomnaya oil platform he thinks he nearly screwed up the lives of thirty people. The car pulls up outside the Peterville. He throws his bag onto his back and climbs out. Sini, Alex and Camila rush forward and throw their arms around him.

‘Pete, we missed you.’

‘We love you, Pete.’

It’s one of the best moments of Pete Willcox’s long, eventful life.

Back at the courtroom the final bail hearings are wrapping up. The last of the activists to be brought to court are Dima, Roman and Phil. In Irvington, New York, Pavel Litvinov watches footage of his son standing in a cage addressing the judge in St Petersburg. Forty-five years earlier, Pavel stood up in a similar cage in a Moscow courtroom and delivered a speech that resonated across the Soviet Union.

‘There was never any question for me whether I would go to Red Square or not,’ he told the judge that day. ‘As a Soviet citizen I deemed it necessary to voice my disagreement with the action of my government, which filled me with indignation… This is what I have fought against and what I shall continue to fight against for the rest of my life.’

Now his son is standing in a courtroom cage before another Russian judge. Despite bail being granted in the earlier cases, the Investigative Committee is forcefully arguing that Dima should remain in jail in case he absconds. Could Helmet-hair and Gerbil have arranged for him to get the same treatment as Colin? Dima grips his hands around the metal bars and clears his throat.

‘We sailed into Arctic waters in September to bear witness,’ he tells the court. ‘To tell a story. We came to tell a story about the risk to the global climate and the Russian environment from opening up Arctic oil fields to companies such as Gazprom, Shell, Rosneft, Exxon and others. It would be unthinkable and irresponsible of me not to use the opportunity of this criminal trial to tell that story now. I want a trial. I want to be able to speak to the authorities and society of Russia, to the global media, to explain that our journey to the Prirazlomnaya was not an act of hooliganism or disrespect for society. Instead we were sounding an alarm, a warning of imminent danger.’

Camera shutters click, TV crews jostle, Dima squeezes the bars of the cage and stares squarely, defiantly at the judge.

‘I was proud of him,’ says Pavel. ‘I was proud of everything he did. I felt we gave him the right values and I loved that he was devoted to something more important in his life than making money.’

The judge retires for half an hour then returns to deliver the verdict. Dima is granted bail. He lowers his head in the cage and nods. Roman and Phil are also told they will be freed. They’re all taken back to Kresty, where Dima and Roman are told to prepare for immediate release. But Phil’s paperwork hasn’t been completed and he won’t be freed yet. Dima packs his huge pink bag, throws it onto his back and picks up his towel. Stitched into it are the words ‘SAVE THE ARCTIC’.