The Devil's Playground (23 page)

would gladly take Berlin with its greyness and death if I

could be with him there. But I do not think he is there. Maybe

in Amsterdam where I believe my father is, where Paula is.

I fear for Alfred, he is so sweet and useless in the eyes of

others, no one sees his passion and fire. It is only the newness

of this place, the light, the surroundings, which make it

bearable without him. I feel that he is like one of my lungs

and that without him I will not live long.

I look at the sea and roads here. The roads so narrow and

slight, as if ashamed to be conduits for such a modern load.

There is an excitement in new places, a quickening of the

heart; it appeals to everything we have lost. It tells us that

all is not gone. That we can see again, that the light bouncing

off a bicycle standing by the side of a fence can be more

beautiful than anything man has ever or will ever create.

But there is also sadness. We take our losses with us.

Everything left behind. Everything unknown. I will not

surrender to my inheritance. I will not prove the old man

right. I must do something wildly unusual or I will go crazy.

It was so strange to be out of the District. To see the other

world that existed congruent to the one he knew so well.

The everyday shuffle of commuters, last-minute cigarettes

outside glass-fronted office blocks, new buildings constantly

going up, a surprise at every corner, unfamiliarity at every

corner. The old city slowly giving way to the new, its body marked and scarred but painted over, a palimpsest which the past kept pushing against, at every turn and step, in the

ghosts and phantom limbs of demolished buildings and

renewed facades.

For the past seven years Van Hijn’s life had been bordered

and circumscribed by the small yet all encompassing boundaries

of the red-light district, his District, and he felt a

sudden moment of release, as if the area were a prison so

well designed that only on escaping did you even realize its

true nature and function.

He found the address that the old man of the museum

had written down. Another remnant from a previous century,

he thought, walking up to the splintered doorframe, the

rusted buzzer.

No name.

He pressed it. Heard something like an amplified insect

whirr, looked up to see a small camera mounted high above,

away from the hands of intruders, tracking its way towards

him.

He put on his best smile, serious yet unthreatening - he’d

once spent time in front of a mirror perfecting a vast array

of smiles that conveyed many things - and held his badge

out towards the dead eye of the lens.

He heard a small click and the door opened. A young

man, black frizzy hair, Lennon glasses, dark polo-neck and

trousers, stood smiling.

Van Hijn didn’t know what he’d expected, another Methusalan

perhaps.

The man shook his hand and led him inside. ‘Glad to meet

you, detective. Piet Pretorius. We can talk upstairs,’ he said,

in almost perfect Dutch, but not quite; Van Hijn noted a

touch of Afrikaans there. ‘Moshe at the museum told me

you might be coming.’

‘Oh.’ He hated it when the element of surprise was gone.

This man had had time to think of what to present of himself

and his organization, what to say, how much … yet if Moshe

hadn’t called, the door might not have been opened at all.

‘He told you why I was coming?’

‘Yes.’ The man stopped, turned around, creeping closer.

‘You understand most people will never know about this, let

alone see it. We are not a public information group or a

resource for policemen. Some things can exist only in the

shadows.’

Van Hijn nodded and the man continued down the hall.

It had once been a wide passageway, wide for Amsterdam

where every building had a width tax levied on it, but was

now narrowed severely by hundreds of white cardboard

boxes stacked on both sides, each seemingly on the point of

toppling and setting the whole thing off in a chain reaction.

As they passed, plumes of dust spun like dirt devils from the

tops of the boxes. Van Hijn walked carefully, inhaling the

deep, rich aroma of old books and paper gone yellow and

musty. It was somehow comforting.

The man stopped when they reached the fourth floor. He

stood before a black door. Metal, Van Hijn reckoned, pretty

much unassailable. He watched as another camera picked up

their faces and then a slow whoosh of hydraulic release and

the door opened.

It could have been any office. Van Hijn stared at the small

partitions, people locked behind computer screens, each in

their own cubicle, the giant hum of machinery like static

saturating the air. A sense of purpose and dedication surrounded

them like smoke. Some turned and watched as he

walked past and he noticed how young they were, staring at

him with light-drained eyes. They reached a cubicle at the

far end of the room, by the window, and the man motioned

Van Hijn to sit.

‘Welcome to AYN, detective. As you can see we are not

a big organization and our resources are limited but I will be

happy to help you in any way you wish.’ He flicked on the

computer screen and a leather-jacketed Snoopy ran across

the desktop, back and forth, a cute grin on his face.

‘I don’t know how much Moshe told you about what we

do,’ Piet said.

‘Nothing.’

‘You know about the Internet, detective, about auction

sites?’

Van Hijn nodded.

‘Well, when these auction sites were first set up, at the

same time another group of sites were encoded and put into

motion. Sites for selling things that can’t be sold on Ebay or

Amazon. A lot of these sites just sell bootleg CDs, films on

video months before they’ve reached the cinema - harmless,

really. But there’s a small group of sites that sell items of,

shall I say, special interest. Several of us noticed that the

Internet suddenly provided an incredibly easy, risk-free and

profitable place for the dissemination of these items. Some

even thought the Internet came into being because of this

very need. Regardless, we track them here.’

Van Hijn watched as the man keyed in some commands.

‘What kind of items?’

‘Yes, you’re interested, of course you are, everyone is. The

organization was founded in the mid-fifties when this type

of memorabilia started appearing regularly at auctions, in the

backs of military magazines. Then came the Internet and

suddenly it seemed the whole world was flooded. We started

out monitoring only items that had links to Nazism or

other anti-Semitic content. The collapse of the Soviet Union

inundated the market with newly “unearthed” souvenirs that

had been taken during the fall of Berlin and slept, silent and

cold, for that long Russian winter. There was so much. Of

course, Hitler’s skull and hairpiece, his teeth and shoes these

things hold a certain allure. People who might not even

believe in that man will want his relics. People will collect

anything and the more illustrious or infamous its history the

more it’s desired. We tracked who the buyers were, the

sellers, we made lists and drew up charts. Certain patterns

kept emerging. There were a few groups who were buying

the majority of the stuff. There were groups that were interested

only in certain things - in Holocaustiana for example.’

Tou track only anti-Semitic objects?’ Van Hijn understood

how something like the Net could be the breeding

ground and habitat of rumours and myths that externalized

our darkest folds, and how its very structure was similar. The

snaking, sinewy lines reaching out, spilling information, the

constant cluster of numbers streaming in.

‘No.’ Piet shook his head. ‘We track anything of the sort.

Hairpieces and underpants - all that stuff, we leave. We’re

primarily interested in film. There is something about film,

don’t you agree? Something that makes us forget we are

watching it. That takes us somewhere else. We believe in it

more deeply than in the other plastic arts. I think we may

even believe in it more deeply than in our day-to-day lives.

A few years ago a sudden glut of video footage from the

Yugoslav wars hit the market. Home-made videos from the

rape camps near Manjaca and the concentration camps of

Omarska. There were streaming real-time previews available. You could test before you bought. It seems that in every regime, everywhere across the globe, people have filmed the

worst atrocities and of course it makes you wonder why.

People don’t film stuff unless they want to watch it repeatedly,

or preserve the memory, or disseminate it. You see what we

are dealing with here? We are talking late-night entertainment.

There are parties organized. Strict non-copying regulations.

These items have to remain scarce, you see, or they’re

not quite the same.’

Snoopy kept walking across the screen. All ones and zeros,

Van Hijn thought, whether it was a cute animated beagle or

rape footage, it was just numbers to the computer. ‘Moshe

mentioned something about reels of Nazi film.’ He thought

it best to keep to himself what he knew, what he suspected,

about the nature of these films. That they weren’t the holy

grail that Piet and the others sought. That they were something

else altogether.

Piet turned to look at him, his fingers still tapping on the

keyboard. ‘Yes, there has been a somewhat unnatural amount

of interest since that was posted. Enough to suggest that this

might be the real thing.’

‘The real thing?’ He felt his heart speed. A tremor. But

these people were always looking for the real thing, he

understood their excitement and he wondered how good the

fakery had been to convince them. Had Jake been used to

add ‘authenticity’ to the footage? Was he a victim or an

assailant? He knew he would have to watch these films, that

inside them lay the answer to the murders of the last nine

months.

‘For many years, ever since the end of the war, there were

rumours going around that there was some surviving footage

that the Nazis had taken inside the camps. Of course it is

well documented that many things were filmed but they

were, if nothing else, extremely assiduous in destroying a lot

of this stuff before the Russians came. But this was different,

rumours of footage of the medical experiments, actual footage

of Mengele working in his lab. Can you imagine that?

Even I, a Jew, have to confess a certain desire to see that.

To actually see this man, these things. Like all rumours it

had its moments of intensity and then of silence. Every few

years someone would claim to have found such reels but

they always proved false.’

‘And what makes you think they’re genuine this time

round?’ Van Hijn said, still suspicious.

‘I don’t know. I’ve been doing this job for ten years. It

feels like it could be true. You sense these things. How words

will suddenly give you a certain chill. We’ll see in the next

couple of days.’

‘What happens then?’ Van Hijn asked.

‘The preview goes online.’ The man clicked the mouse.

Snoopy disappeared and a single html page took its place.

Van Hijn read the scant paragraph of information that

announced the forthcoming auction of 49 reels of highly

collectible ‘home movies’ shot during the Nazi regime. There

was a time and date for the auction and a further statement

that a small preview of the footage would go online at the

site’s address in a week’s time. This would be the only

preview. The footage was believed to have been privately

shot at different concentration camps across the Third Reich

during the years 1942 to 1944. Thirty of the 49 reels were in

colour. There was no further information.

Van Hijn leaned back and lit a cigarette. A few faces turned

his way, expressed disapproval and then hunched back into

their monitors. The room vibrated with the low, lulling hum

of processors firing, printer keys rattling and the pling-plock

of keys hammered by young, agile fingers.

“You mentioned that you track the people who buy these

things,’ he said, trying to find somewhere to flick his ash,

settling on his palm.

‘There are a lot of groups whose mandate is the search

for such artefacts.’ The man handed him an empty CD case,

pointed at his cigarette. ‘Have you heard of SPAR, detective?’

Van Hijn shook his head. This was a new world to him,

existing behind the bland plastic of hard drives, humming

in the wires as it crossed continents and oceans, like the

perfect spy.

ŚWe have reports that two of their members, one male

and one female, arrived here in Amsterdam late last night.’

‘What… why?’

‘ They are after the films. The 49 reels. Their presence here

in the city leads us to suspect that we might be dealing with

the genuine article.’

‘So the films are here,’ Van Hijn said, more to himself