Every man in this room wore the same type of face mask—a wolf or a jackal. Not many of them were talking, and those who did talk were doing so in hushed voices. Yet the mood here was lighter than in the main hall, almost like a sporting event.
“This represents something new for us,” said the usher.
In the middle of this room was a rustic bed next to a rustic trunk next to a stone fireplace. The walls of a log cabin surrounded us so that you had a half circle of about maybe fifteen anonymous spectators just like myself, relaxing on plush benches as if we were all in a sort of rustic theater, and center stage, chained to the headboard of the bed on a long leash, was our woman.
None of which was the most disturbing part.
It was the window.
On the far side of the room was a giant window facing directly toward the general public: a massive floor-to-ceiling piece of glass contorted into a twisting cone, set street level with the main square of Amsterdam’s city center, in front of tourists and locals, who were everywhere, everywhere, coming right up to us, passing us, hovering near us, using us—women adjusting their makeup in the reflection, guys smoothing out their hair—everyone walking by with absolutely no idea what was in here, oblivious to the fact that fewer than four inches away from their noses a girl was about to wish she were dead.
“Fear not,” said the usher, seeing me see this. “Even if the people outside were to shine a searchlight beam of a billion lumens at us, point-blank, they’d see nothing of what is inside. The glass is one-way. Zero transmittance. Bulletproof.”
I began to understand that not every guest of the Society would be invited back here. The main lobby contained the secret party everyone thought was the secret party. This room housed the true taboo.
“We call it the Chamber of Harmony,” said the usher. “None of the women who are brought in here are compliant. In fact, we’ve gone out of our way to select only females whose sincerest wish is to remain untouched in this way.”
He smiled.
Organized rape.
“Quite something, isn’t it?” he said.
In the city center.
They weren’t selling sex, they weren’t trafficking indentured workers through financial coercion or extortion. They were simply providing public rape. No legal ambiguity, no room for interpretation, just forced sex in public.