Don't Trust, Don't Fear, Don't Beg: The Extraordinary Story of the Arctic 30

TWENTY-EIGHT

Ana Paula Maciel, a 31-year-old biologist from Brazil, is brought to court with Sini and Camila and taken immediately to the courtroom for her hearing. Sini and Camila shuffle up next to each other in the holding cell and squeeze each other’s hands.

Mads Christensen punches the air. The Room of Doom is a riot of cheering and whooping. Then suddenly Ben Ayliffe cries, ‘Whoa, wait! Look.’ He’s pointing at his laptop screen.

The room is silent except for the ticking hands of those three clocks above the hand-drawn flags. A minute passes. And another. Nervous glances are shared. Then a new message drops onto their screens.

And now the room erupts with applause. The video screen is filled with boxes showing arms aloft in campaign hubs around the world.

Outside the holding cell in St Petersburg a guard appears. Sini and Camila look up. The man stands back and Ana Paula walks in, head bowed. She’s stood in the middle of the cell, her face a painting of grief. ‘You were right,’ she says, looking up. ‘You were right, Sini, it didn’t happen. Three more months.’

Sini and Camila reach out to touch her, but Ana Paula can’t hold it in any longer, she jumps up on her toes, her face breaks into a huge grin and she screams, ‘We’re outta here, girls! We’re gonna be free!’

‘What?’

‘It was a joke! I got bail.’

The corridors of St Petersburg’s Primorskiy courthouse echo to the distant sound of elated screaming.

Sini still doesn’t think they’ll give her bail. She thinks they’re going to single her out because she climbed the oil platform, so she uses the hearing to unload on the prosecutor and the investigator. She comes to the front of the cage and jabs her finger at the investigator, saying, ‘You’re a liar. You tell lies.’ Then she points at the prosecutor and says, ‘And you. Yeah you. You’re hiding evidence.’ She wants to show them she’s not scared, but her lawyer looks back at her and hisses, ‘Sini, maybe you should say a bit less.’

The judge retires. Half an hour later he returns with his verdict. Sini braces herself. The judge is speaking now, the translator is whispering the words to Sini.

‘…and therefore the detainee is released while the investigation continues.’

Sini looks up. She’s staggered. Bail? She got bail? It’s hard to believe. She’s actually going to be freed? Her lawyer looks back and sticks her thumb up. A smile breaks on Sini’s lips, she wants to leap and jump and hold somebody.

Maybe, finally, it’s over.

By the end of the day, twelve of the thirty have been granted bail. They just need the two-million-rouble bonds to be paid, then they’ll be free. At Kresty, Dima is watching Vasily make an extraordinary tomato relish and caviar sandwich when he hears the word ‘Greenpeace’ on the television. He looks up and sees Camila’s face. And he knows.

That night across the SIZOs most of the activists watch the TV news in their cells. They can see the smiling faces of their friends. They know they’re getting bail. They punch the air or scream out through the window or hug their cellmates, or they simply lie on their bunks and close their eyes and bathe in relief.

Dima runs his thumb under the seal of an envelope and pulls out the letter to Lev. He reads it through, then thinks momentarily of ripping it up and throwing the pieces out of the window. But then he stops himself. No, he’s not yet free. They might still single him out. Him and Pete and Frank. He remembers the faces of the competent authorities – Gerbil and Helmet-hair. They were FSB goons, up from St Petersburg. He’s sure of it. He’s in their home town now. His bail hearing is on Friday. This is only Tuesday evening. Anything can happen in the next three days. He slides the letter back into the envelope and puts it under his pillow.

The next day nine more are brought to court, including Alex. There are so many photographers that it feels like walking on the red carpet, except she doesn’t feel glamorous because she’s just stepped out of prison. There are flashes going off, people barking questions. ‘Do you have a few words to say? Alex, how do you feel? Do you think you’ll get bail? Alex? Alex?’ Then she’s pushed into the cage. The judge asks her if she has anything to say. Alex tells the court: ‘Every day in prison for me is connected with the struggle. I joined Greenpeace because I care about the environment and think the Earth should be saved for future generations.’

The judge retires then returns with the verdict. The translator is whispering the words in Alex’s ear and she’s thinking, hurry up and just spit it out, please. And then the judge gets there. She says Alex has got bail.

She feels light-headed. Delirious. It’s like she’s become detached from her body and is watching herself in the cage, getting to her feet and smiling for the cameras. The whole courtroom is filled with reporters. ‘Alex, Alex. What’s your reaction? How do you feel? Have you got a message for your parents? Alex?’

The campaigners are hoping the first of the activists will be freed soon. They expect it to be one of the Russians – Denis or Andrey. But at SIZO-5 a lawyer is clutching a receipt slip for the payment of a two-million-rouble bond, and she’s refusing to leave without her client. ‘This is nonsense,’ Ana Paula’s lawyer tells the governor. ‘Just release her. This procedure is crap. The judge gave her bail, we’ve paid the money. I won’t leave without her.’

And suddenly, unexpectedly, Ana Paula Maciel from Porto Alegre in Brazil is told by a guard that she’s being freed. Half an hour later, from a grey door down the side of SIZO-5, she emerges into a Russian winter’s evening, surrounded by journalists, blinking into flashbulbs, grinning with a combination of delight and shock, holding in her hands a sheet of paper on which she’s written the words ‘SAVE THE ARCTIC’.

But now Pete is worried. He’s back in the cell and his mind is racing. He’s convinced that the others are blaming him for all this. He’s been questioning his judgement as a captain since commandos seized his ship. Shouldn’t he have got out of there as soon as the coastguard started firing warning shots? Some of the crew were kids, they never signed up to years in jail. Pete imagines them lying in their cells, waiting for release and working out how they ended up in this mess in the first place, and deciding it was his fault. They’ll be out soon and they’re going to have their say. They’re going to want to unload, and it’s all coming his way. And maybe they’re right, he thinks. Maybe they’re right.

At 2 p.m. Camila is told her time has come. She’s taken to the meeting room. She waits alone for five minutes, then the door opens and Sini appears with 26-year-old Danish sailor Anne Mie Jensen. They’re taken to the main door of the prison. They’re standing before it now. Then it swings open, and another door opens in front of it, and beyond that is a bank of cameras below a broad sky. Camila walks out. Then Anne Mie. Sini takes a step forward but she doesn’t realise the last door is so heavy. It swings back, Sini leans into it but she can’t hold it back and she’s momentarily squeezed between the prison doors in front of the cameras. She pushes again, steps into the open air, holds her arms aloft and shouts, ‘I’m free!’

It feels like being born again. She wants to run somewhere, anywhere. And she wants to hug anything with a heartbeat. A minute later they’re in the lawyer’s car, speeding down a St Petersburg street.

‘Is it okay if I open the window?’ asks Sini.

‘Yes, sure. Open it.’

So she opens the window and sticks her head through it and shouts, ‘I’m free! I’m free!’ Drivers in passing cars turn their heads, people walking on the pavement look up, they see blonde hair flapping and a woman screaming into the wind.

‘I’m free!’

The women are taken to the Peterville hotel in central St Petersburg and given keys to their rooms. In a third floor corridor Camila is fiddling with a key in the lock while Sini is next to her, jumping up and down on her heels. Behind them Anne Mie is hugging Ana Paula.

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!’