Then again.
This is pretty terrifying. Loud banging. Screaming in Russian. They’re still trying to kick in the door #savethearctic
‘Open this door! Open now!’
Alex looks at Colin, Colin looks at Roman, Roman looks at Alex.
‘Do we open it?’
‘I don’t know. I mean, they sound a bit demented.’
‘I don’t think they need us to open it. They’ll be through it soon anyway.’
Alex finds a piece of paper and scribbles ‘SAVE THE ARCTIC’ in big letters then holds it up, facing the door – a personal message to the commandos who are about to break through. It only takes a moment more. Colin stands up and spreads his arms to shield the other two. Bang bang, and then bang, three whacks and the whole door comes off its hinges and commandos surge into the room.
Alex, Colin and Roman are marched down to the mess room. When they get there Alex sees her friends corralled and heavily guarded. She looks at their faces and sees a mixture of fear, anger, boredom and disorientation.
On the bridge the Russian officer is engaged in a protracted argument with Pete. The man is demanding that he sail the Arctic Sunrise to Murmansk on the Russian mainland, while Pete is politely refusing to co-operate in any way. The officer huffs, he expresses profound displeasure in Russian and broken English. ‘This you say no, yes? But this… you must say yes.’ Then he informs Pete that he will now order the Sunrise to be towed to Russia by the Ladoga. Pete shrugs. For him it’s a matter of deliberate non-co-operation. They’ve boarded his ship illegally, they have no right to be here and he isn’t about to make things easier for them.
The crew on the bridge are herded down the stairs and into the mess, all except for Pete, who the officer hasn’t finished with yet. The door to the mess is guarded by two armed commandos. On a blackboard facing the entrance, the activists have written: ‘Russian soldiers, welcome to the Arctic Sunrise!’
FOUR
Across the ship telephones have been seized, radios disabled and Internet access shut down. But in the mess room, where the crew are being held – and unknown to the occupying Russians – a single telephone is still working. It’s a black plastic handset connected to the last functioning satellite link. The first activists to be pushed into the mess managed to hide the phone from the troopers and now it’s in the galley – the ship’s kitchen – where the smokers have converged to exhale up a ventilator.
Frank calls the Greenpeace office in London. He’s whispering in precise little sentences. He says there were twenty commandos, heavily armed, guns and knives, all wearing masks. The ship is being towed to Murmansk, he says, and it’ll take four or five days. Some of the troopers are talking about serious charges, time in jail, but he thinks that’s bullshit. Then he says he has to go, he doesn’t know how long they’ll have the phone for, and with that the line goes dead.
The trooper guarding the door shifts the weight of the rifle cradled across his chest, looks away then looks back again. Behind him more heavily armed men are stomping through the corridors, going from cabin to cabin, searching bags, drawers, tins, everything. They’re coming out carrying the activists’ books, computers, soap bags. Frank sees one of them clutching his bottle of Sailor Jerry rum.
Minutes pass, then hours. Groups form around card games. The smokers execute a complete takeover of the galley. Phil pulls the camera from his underpants and stashes it in the extractor fan. It’s a relief. There was a stiff plastic cable tie on the camera that was cut off diagonally and it was digging into his thigh.
Over on the Ladoga, Sini is sat on the edge of a bed in a locked cabin. She’s not seen Kruso since they were arrested. She’s been here nearly two days. The Russians have been pleasant enough, but she wants to be back with her friends.
Sini Saarela has been an activist since she was a teenager. For years she’s been scaling highly polluting fossil fuel infrastructure. Her mother would ask her, ‘Why does it always have to be you?’ and Sini would reply, ‘Who else is it going to be?’
She feels a strong connection to the Arctic, she grew up here, she spent time living with the Sami people in the far north and conducted forest mapping in Finland, Sweden and Norway. When someone asked her why she was joining the Arctic Sunrise she said in a soft melodic Finnish accent, ‘Because it’s our Arctic. Who are these Dutch and Russian companies, coming up here and messing up our Arctic? It’s humanity’s Arctic. It’s my nature, the nature where I grew up.’
There’s a knock on the door. It opens and an officer is standing above her. ‘Okay,’ he says, ‘you’re going back to your ship.’
She’s reunited with Kruso, she throws her arms around him but a moment later they’re pulled apart. A soldier gives them back their drysuits and life vests. They’re put into a RHIB and driven across the water to the Arctic Sunrise. As they come closer Sini sees there’s no one on deck to greet them. The Russians drive the boat alongside the Greenpeace ship. They order Sini and Kruso to climb the pilot ladder. And Sini’s thinking, I know I didn’t climb well yesterday, I wasn’t happy with it either. Okay, so the protest only lasted a few minutes, but was it so bad that there’s no one here to meet us?
But when she pulls herself up the last rung of the ladder she sees soldiers with heavy guns and balaclavas. And then she understands.
They’re taken down corridors, past masked men coming out of their friends’ cabins carrying bags and computers, and then they’re pushed into the mess room. There’s a moment of silence as they walk in, then the crew surges towards them, hugging them, some crying with relief. They’re together now. Together on the Arctic Sunrise. All thirty of them.
One of the troopers stands in the doorway and asks for silence. He announces that the activists are to be taken one by one to the laundry room to be searched, and asks for their co-operation. Quickly phones are slipped out of pockets and hidden under cushions. Phil eyes the extractor fan. He’s worried it will be searched and he’ll lose the footage. He doesn’t need to hide the whole camera, just the thumbnail memory card.
Surreptitiously he pulls off a boot. He pulls out the foam sole and with a kitchen knife he cuts a little slot in the heel. He strolls into the galley, looks over his shoulder then pulls out the camera. A commando is standing just two metres away from him, looking in the other direction. Phil’s heart is thumping in his ears. He takes a step to the side so his back is facing the trooper, then he slips the card into the sole, shoves the camera back in the extractor fan then bends down and pulls his boot back on.
A trooper enters the mess and folds his arms across his chest. ‘Okay, listen up! This is the deal…’ Phil spins around. The man is speaking in Russian but he’s got a translator standing next to him. ‘You will be allowed in here and the lounge. You will only be allowed in the corridor of this deck and the deck above. You’re not allowed to go outside and you’re not allowed to go into the hold. I know some of you have cabins there. I don’t care, you can’t use them. For now you stay in here. You don’t leave this room.’
‘Can we go out on deck to smoke?’
‘No, you’re not allowed to go out on deck. You’re only allowed in these two corridors.’
‘Can we see Pete, the captain?’
‘No, you cannot see the captain.’
‘Are we going to Murmansk?’
‘Yes.’
‘What will happen when we get there?’
‘I cannot say.’