That night Shaw put on a suit and attended the opera at the Muziektheater. After the performance was over he could’ve walked back to his hotel, but he chose instead to head in the opposite direction. Tonight was why he’d really come to Holland. He was a tourist no longer.

As he approached the red-light district he observed some activity down a dark and particularly narrow alleyway. A little boy stood there in the shadows. Next to him was a rough-looking man with his zipper down and one large hand stuffed in the boy’s pants.

In an instant Shaw had changed direction. He slipped into the alley and placed a blow to the back of the man’s head. It was a measured strike, designed to stun, not kill, though Shaw was sorely tempted to finish off the predator. As the man fell unconscious to the pavement Shaw crammed a hundred euros in the boy’s hand and sent him off with a hard push and a dire warning in Dutch. As the child’s frantic footfalls echoed away, Shaw knew the boy would at least not starve or die tonight.

As he resumed his original route he noted for the first time that the old stock exchange was directly across from the hookers in the red-light. This struck him as odd until he thought about it. Cash and prostitution had always been bedfellows. He wondered if some of the ladies accepted company shares in lieu of euros as payment.

Even more ironic than the exchange’s close proximity to the whores was that the red-light district completely surrounded Oude Kerk, or Old Church, the city’s most ancient and largest house of worship. Built in 1306 as a simple wooden chapel, it had been constantly tinkered with and enlarged for the next two centuries. One jokester had even inlaid a brass pair of breasts into the pavement by the front entrance. Shaw had been inside a few times. What had struck him was the series of carvings on the choir benches depicting men having massive bowel movements. He could only assume that masses must have been really long in those days.