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

INTRODUCTION

Frank Hewetson is lying on the upper bunk of a prison cell in the Russian Arctic, waiting impatiently for the effects of a Valium tablet to kick in. He’s wearing woollen tights, two pairs of socks, three T-shirts, a pullover, a skull-gripping hat and earplugs. The hot incandescent bulb dangling from a wire above his head has just been switched off by the guards, and Murmansk SIZO-1 isolation jail is stirring.

He can hear boots stomping on the floor above his head, prisoners thumping the walls in cells down the corridor, the distant sound of screaming. Across the prison, windows are swinging open and ropes are being fed through bars, then lowered down the outside walls or swung from cell to cell.

Frank pulls a blanket up around his neck and holds himself against the cold biting air. He is forty-eight years old, he has a wife and two children back in London and he’s charged by the Russian state with piracy – a crime that carries a minimum sentence of ten years in a country where 99 per cent of all trials end in a verdict of guilty.[1]

He opens his eyes into narrow slits and looks down. One of his cellmates, Boris, is bent at the waist and pressing his ear against the plughole of the sink, an expression of strained concentration on his face. Boris is a short man with olive skin, muscles like marble, a permanent wrap of stubble on his face and a forehead so narrow that his hairline nearly merges with his eyebrows.

He’s charged with double manslaughter.

Frank’s other cellmate, Yuri (multiple counts of assault by Taser), is feeding a rope out of the window and whistling to himself. He’s younger than Boris, not much meat on him, sallow skin and greasy black hair. Minutes from now this rope network, known as the doroga – ‘the road’ – will connect almost every cell along the outside walls of the jail, allowing the prisoners to communicate with each other and share contraband. It is a physical internet through which power is projected and justice dispensed by the mafia bosses who control much of this place.

With relief, Frank senses his mind becoming foggy. The air no longer stings his cheeks and he can’t feel the wire mesh digging into his back through the thin mattress. Thank Christ for those drugs. Every night when the prison awakes the pills allow him to slip into something approaching sleep. He secured the Valium prescription five weeks ago after experiencing what the authorities thought was a cardiac arrest but which was, in reality, a panic attack brought on by the prospect of spending ten to fifteen years in a Russian jail. He was sped to hospital and bundled into a wheelchair then pushed through the corridors at breakneck speed by an armed guard. Patients and doctors dove into doorways to avoid being run down as Frank careered towards an emergency consultation, wires trailing from electrodes stuck to his bare chest, the guard singing lines to himself from the back catalogue of Depeche Mode.

Boris stands up straight and looks at Frank quizzically. ‘Frank,’ he hisses. ‘Come come come. Frank!’

Frank closes his eyes, pretending to sleep, but a moment later he can feel Boris’s breath on his face. It smells of potatoes and fish-head soup.

‘Fraaaank. Come come.’

‘Boris, piss off and leave me alone, all right.’

‘Come, Frank. Come.’

He’s pointing towards the sink. Something in his voice is utterly, irresistibly insistent.

‘Frank!’

‘Jesus, Boris. What?’

‘Come!’

Frank rubs his eyes, pulls out the earplugs, swings his legs over the edge of the bunk and grudgingly jumps to the ground. Boris slaps him on the back then leads him over to the sink. Yuri ties off the rope, crosses the cell, kneels down under the sink and starts unscrewing the U-bend. Boris kneels down next to him and together the two Russians strain hard, pulling the pipe away from the wall until – with a scraping metallic pop – it comes clear.

‘Frank, sit.’

Frank scratches his head. The air is filled with thumping and banging as the rope network comes alive. Soon the prisoners will be using it to share illicit letters, sugar, mobile telephones, an underground satirical newspaper and perfumed cigarettes given as gifts by prisoners to lovers they have never met and never will.

His cellmates are staring up at him with imploring eyes. Boris is clutching the liberated U-bend like it’s a glass of beer. Slowly, hesitantly, Frank lowers himself to the ground then Boris pushes Frank’s head down, at the same time twisting the U-bend until it’s pressed against Frank’s ear. Frank’s eyes swivel in their sockets; he stares at Boris and he’s about to say something when he hears a faint tinny voice.

‘Allo? Dis is prisoner boss Andrey Artamov in cell four-one-zero. Is dat the Arctic firty?’

Frank gulps. ‘Er…’ He hesitates then puts his mouth to the end of the tube. ‘Yes, hello?’

‘Is dat the Arctic firty?’

‘Er… yes. Well, one of them.’

‘I have friend of you here.’

‘Right. Okay.’

Silence, then, ‘Hello, Frank?’

‘Yes?’

‘Frank, this is Roman Dolgov, your Greenpeace compatriot from the cell above you.’

‘Er… hello, Roman. You seem to be somewhere in my U-bend system. How did you fit down there?’

‘Ha ha, yes, this is funny, Frank. What you say is funny.’

‘Roman, is this… are we talking on… is this a telephone?’

‘This is prison telephone. I have to tell you, Frank, we have a problem.’

Roman is a 44-year-old campaigner from the Moscow office of Greenpeace, arrested with Frank and twenty-eight others when their ship was stormed by Russian commandos seven weeks ago. They’d held a protest at an Arctic oil platform operated by President Putin’s state-run oil company, Gazprom, and now they’re facing the full fury of the Kremlin.

‘Roman, what’s going on?’

‘I speak with respected prisoners, Frank. They tell me you must talk to cell three-one-six. The cell opposite yours.’

‘Okay. Why?’

‘They say you must get the names of the Russians in that cell. They do not give their names, they do not go to gulyat’ – the hour of exercise the prisoners are granted each day – ‘and they have broken the doroga. They do not co-operate. The rope network on one wall is broken. Big problem.’

‘Er… okay, Roman. So… so… I’m sorry, say again, what do they want me to do?’

‘Francesco is also in their cell. You must ask him, what are the names of the Russians?’

Frank thinks for a moment. He rubs the fuzz on his head. His blond hair was closely cropped on the ship but now it’s growing out. He hands the U-bend to Boris, stands up and opens a hatch in the door.

‘Frankie!’ he shouts.

In a door across the hallway a hatch opens and the face of 38-year-old Frenchman Francesco Pisanu – another of the Greenpeace detainees – appears.

‘Yeah?’

‘Francesco, what are the names of the Russians they’ve just put in your cell?’

‘One moment.’

His face disappears. A minute later he returns.

‘They will not tell me.’

‘Francesco, you must find out the names of the Russians.’

‘They will not tell me. They are scared to tell me.’

‘Really?’

‘They say they are scared.’

Frank kneels down, takes the U-bend and speaks into it. ‘Roman, they won’t say.’

‘They will not say?’

‘No.’

‘Oh.’

At the other end of the pipe a conversation is conducted in Russian, before Roman returns.

‘Okay, Frank. Good night.’

‘That’s it?’

‘Good night, Frank.’

‘Er… okay. Night, Roman.’

Frank leans back, still holding the pipe, tapping the end with a finger and biting his lip. Boris shrugs. Yuri grunts and pushes himself to his feet. Frank stares at the pipe for a moment before handing it back to Boris, then he stands up, sniffs, clambers back onto his bunk, pulls the blanket right up to his neck and lies there, staring at the ceiling.

An illegal telephone network fashioned from the prison plumbing system? Mafia bosses issuing orders through a U-bend? And this isn’t even the strangest thing that’s happened in the last two months.

‘Christ,’ Frank whispers to himself, shaking his head. ‘How the fuck did I end up here?’