The Investigator Who Discovered Prague’s Secret

Prague in October has the light of fairy tales without happy endings. The cobblestones of the Old Town gleam wet beneath a rain that never quite stops, and the Baroque buildings lining the main squares mingle with the yeasty smell of underground bars and the dense mist rising from the Vltava. It was against that backdrop, so far removed from the broad avenues of Montevideo where Renata Solís had grown up and learned to report, that she landed in the second week of October with an assignment her editor had presented with a certainty that proved rather misguided: “Three weeks, maximum.”

Four months had passed since the first death. Four powerful men had been found lifeless in the finest suites of the city’s finest hotels. A Swiss banker with business interests throughout Central Europe. A Czech politician linked to the Ministry of Finance. An Arab businessman based in London who controlled an investment fund of opaque proportions. A German pharmaceutical executive headquartered in Munich. All dead, all naked, all bearing the same signs that police reports described with remarkable discomfort in the antiseptic language of forensic examiners: clear evidence of having fucked with brutal intensity in the hours before death. Fresh semen on the sheets, fingernail marks on their backs, bites on their nipples, the cock still half-erect in two of the bodies.

The autopsies agreed: cardiac arrest caused by extreme exhaustion. But no forensic examiner could explain an organic substance found in minute quantities in the tissues of three of the four bodies—the fourth had been cremated before the order for additional analysis arrived—or the trace of an unclassified compound that some technicians described as being of Amazonian plant origin.

The international press speculated. The Czech police said nothing. And the magazine Renata worked for had a correspondent with a Uruguayan passport, twenty years of reporting in four countries, and a curiosity that functioned like a permanent manufacturing defect: once she caught the scent of a story, she needed to know how it ended, even if the ending was uncomfortable.

Renata was tall and slim, with dark, curly hair inherited from her Galician grandmother and honey-colored eyes people usually described as intense before getting to know her and simply as threatening afterward. She had small, firm tits, with dark nipples that hardened at the slightest thing, and an ass earned by walking miles through unfamiliar cities. She had been in a period of solitude for months, one that wasn’t entirely uncomfortable but had sharp edges. Her last relationship—a photographer from Montevideo with too many opinions and too little self-awareness—had ended six months earlier, quietly and without any grand scenes. Six months without a cock inside her, with no orgasms beyond the ones she gave herself with her fingers in the shower. Work had kept her busy. Prague was going to be work.

On her first night, settled into a small, respectable hotel in the Vinohrady district, she reviewed files on her laptop screen while drinking the first glass of a Moravian wine that proved better than expected. At eleven-thirty, her phone vibrated with a message from an unknown number.

—Seventh step of Charles Bridge. Midnight. Alone.

Renata put away her phone, finished the wine, and put on her coat.

***

Charles Bridge at midnight was almost deserted. The stone statues stood in line in the darkness like indifferent witnesses. The Vltava’s mist rose in slow curls, and the sound of the city was muffled by the water flowing below.

The man waiting for her on the seventh step was about forty-five, thin, and wearing a gray wool coat that had seen better days. He introduced himself as Jan Horák, an inspector with the Serious Crimes Unit of the Czech National Police. He had spent two years in Colombia working with Interpol, which explained his fluent Spanish, with a slightly neutral accent that sounded strange coming from a man with Northern European features.

—I’ve been on this for four months—he said without preamble. —And I need someone to publish something before they take the case away from me.

—Why would they take it away?

—Because I’m getting too close to people who don’t want anyone getting too close.

He told her what he knew. The four dead men belonged to an informal network of powerful men that Jan had traced to an organization operating under the name the Crystal Circle. It wasn’t exactly a secret society in the classic sense. It was a private club with no official name or legal structure, organizing closed gatherings where money and sex flowed as naturally as they did in any other elite setting, only without the usual pretense. Access was strictly by invitation. The gatherings rotated among private properties in different European cities.

—And the woman?—Renata asked.

Jan looked at her.

—How do you know there’s a woman?

—Because the autopsy reports mention recent sexual activity in all four cases. And because if it were a man, the police would already have a suspect.

Jan nodded slowly.

—They call her the Lady. No real name. The witnesses’ descriptions don’t match in anything except one detail: they all remember that she made you feel like the only person in the room.

They agreed to continue talking. Jan had an apartment in Malá Strana, a ten-minute walk from the bridge. The bottle of slivovitz on the table was a perfectly placed cliché, but the apartment had views of the city’s rooftops that made up for anything.

***

The conversation was long, productive, and, in the end, an excuse for what both of them had known since the second step of the bridge would happen at some point that night.

Renata was the one who crossed the space between them. She did it without preamble, with the same decisiveness she used when entering a difficult interview. She placed her hand on his chest, looked him in the eyes, and he closed the remaining distance.

Jan kissed her slowly at first, with an attentiveness Renata hadn’t expected from a man who seemed accustomed to moving fast. He took off her coat, patiently unbuttoned her blouse, and moved down her neck and shoulders with his mouth while she kept her eyes closed and her fingers tangled in his graying blond hair. He unclasped her bra with one clean tug and took her nipples between his lips, one after the other, sucking them hungrily until Renata moaned for the first time that night. He slowly bit her left nipple, and she felt a direct pull between her legs, an instant wetness soaking her panties.

—It’s been a long time since anyone touched me like this—she murmured, her voice hoarse.

—I can tell—Jan replied, running his tongue over the other nipple.

When Renata slipped her hand inside his trousers and found him already tense and hard, he changed pace completely. She pulled his cock out of his briefs and squeezed it in her hand, gauging its thickness, the thick vein running along the top, the tip already wet. It was a generous cock, thicker than it was long, and Renata’s mouth watered just from holding it. She dragged his trousers down to his ankles with a sharp movement and knelt on the kitchen’s wooden floor.

—Wait—Jan said, but she had already put it in her mouth.

She sucked him slowly at first, wetting him thoroughly, letting saliva run down her chin. She ran her tongue along the entire length, from the base to the head, and licked his balls one by one while jerking him off with her hand. Jan had both hands braced against the kitchen’s marble counter, his knuckles white. When she took him all the way into her mouth again, until the tip touched the back of her throat, Jan let out a long moan that bounced off the tiles.

—Fuck, Renata—he gasped first in Czech and then in Spanish. —You’re going to make me come in your mouth.

She looked up at him with bright eyes and kept sucking, faster now, pressing her lips against the hard skin, helping herself with her hand. She gently dug a fingernail into his perineum and felt his cock pulse inside her mouth. Jan grabbed her hair, not to force her but to steady himself.

Renata pulled away just before he came. She stood with a slow smile, wiped the saliva from his chin with the back of her hand, and hiked her skirt up to her waist.

—Not yet—she told him.

Jan shoved her against the kitchen wall, his hands spread over her hips, and lifted her. He ripped off her panties in one tug—the fabric tore with a sharp sound that made Renata squeeze her thighs—and she wrapped her legs around his waist as he buried himself in her with a single thrust, all the way in, without preamble. Renata cried out against his neck. She felt herself opening around that thick cock, felt her pussy streaming and soaking the base of his shaft, felt every inch buried to her womb.

—Like that—she panted. —Like that, harder.

Jan fucked her slowly at first, then with greater force as they found their rhythm. The wall was cold against her back, and he was hot and solid against her chest. He bit her neck, licked the hollow of her collarbone, squeezed her tits with one hand while holding her ass open with the other. Each thrust drew a higher moan from Renata. The wet sound of his cock entering and leaving her soaked pussy filled the kitchen, and she was no longer ashamed of anything.

—I’m about to come—Renata warned him in his ear. —Hold me tight. Don’t stop.

Jan sped up, driving into her with all the strength of his hips, and she came with a long moan that died against his shoulder. Her pussy contracted in spasms around his cock, squeezing it, wetting it again. Jan managed two, three, four more thrusts and then pulled out just in time, wrapped his hand around himself, and came across Renata’s belly in thick, hot spurts that splashed from her navel to her tits. A guttural moan rose from his chest as the last pulse landed on her left nipple.

He held her against the wall for a moment before lowering her to the floor. Renata ran two fingers over her belly, gathered some of the semen, and put them in her mouth, looking him in the eyes.

—Salty—she said.

Jan laughed for the first time all night.

She caught her breath against him.

—It’s been a while—she said, more to herself than to him.

—For me too—Jan replied.

Later, already in bed with their bodies calmer, Jan explained the rest. The Circle held its meetings at private properties throughout Europe. The next one was scheduled for ten days later, in a seventeenth-century mansion outside the city. If Renata wanted to get in, she would need a reference from someone already inside.

—I have a name—Jan said. —A Peruvian businessman who’s been attending these parties for years. His name is Andrés Cárdenas. He usually comes alone. With that story, you can get the invitation.

It took them four days to put it together.

***

The mansion was twenty minutes south of Prague, among fields that in October were wastelands of dark earth and low fog. The building was Renaissance, restored with unmistakable money, with gardens that must have been spectacular in spring but that night were wrapped in the same gray mist covering the rest of the Bohemian landscape.

Renata arrived by taxi at nine that evening. The dress she had chosen—dark blue, fitted at the waist, with a back opening that reached almost as low as it could—was a work expense she had struggled to justify on the expense report. She wore nothing underneath. The person checking guests in at the door said nothing, merely looked her up and down and wrote her name on a list.

Inside, sixteenth-century architecture contrasted with what was happening among the guests. In the main salon, elegantly dressed men and women conversed with the calculated relaxation money produces when it has been around for a long time. At the edges, that relaxation was losing its disguise: a woman in a silver dress let two men grope her tits at once on an ottoman, a couple fucked standing against a column without caring who watched, a gray-haired man had a blonde’s head buried between his legs and made no attempt to hide his moan.

Andrés Cárdenas found her before she could look for him. He was exactly as Jan had described him: around fifty, gray hair combed back, the relaxed gaze of a man who had long had everything he wanted. He introduced himself with an outstretched glass and the bare minimum.

—Andrés. Lima, although I’ve lived in Zurich for twelve years.

They talked for half an hour. Andrés was intelligent and observant, with the particular skill some men have of talking about anything while communicating, with complete transparency, that they were thinking about something else. He led her to a smaller side room with velvet sofas and subdued lighting. Other people made no effort to disguise what they were doing: on the sofa opposite, a brunette with huge tits was riding a bald man while another woman sucked his nipples from behind.

Andrés lifted her dress with one hand and kissed her at the same time, without asking. Renata didn’t stop him. He ran his fingers over her naked pussy and let out a small growl of satisfaction when he found her without panties.

—You came prepared.

—I came to work—she replied with half a smile, biting his lower lip.

He sat her on the edge of the sofa and opened her legs with both hands, spreading her knees as far as they would go. He knelt between them and licked her pussy in one long pass, from bottom to top, ending with his tongue buried in her clitoris. Renata let out a sharp gasp and gripped the back of the sofa. Andrés wasted no time: he worked her clitoris with the tip of his tongue in tight circles, then sucked it between his lips as if it were candy, then inserted two fingers and curled them, searching for the spot. He found it on the first try. He moved them with a musician’s precision, in and out, while continuing to suck her clitoris.

—Oh, fuck—Renata gasped. —Don’t stop.

Andrés didn’t stop. He added a third finger and sped up. Renata felt herself opening, felt her pussy beginning to gush over his hand, felt the orgasm rising from her feet. She came with a jolt that tensed her thighs and cut off her breath, pressing Andrés’s head against her pubis with both hands. A small spurt escaped and bathed his chin, but he didn’t pull away.

Andrés raised his head, his mouth wet and his smile satisfied. His chin gleamed, and he made no attempt to wipe it.

Renata knelt. She undid his trousers, pulled out his cock—long and curved, with prominent veins—and took it in her hand first, slowly, looking him in the eyes. She licked the tip as if tasting something. Then she took it into her mouth, all the way down, finding the rhythm he needed. Renata sucked him hungrily, pressing her lips tight, letting the tip strike the back of her throat until her eyes filled with tears. She pulled his cock from her mouth for a second to spit on it, then gripped it again and licked his balls while jerking him off with her saliva.

—Holy God—Andrés murmured. —You suck like a goddess.

She didn’t answer. She took him all the way into her mouth again and squeezed his balls with her other hand. Andrés came quickly, with a sound he tried, but failed, to suppress completely. He ejaculated into her mouth in two thick waves, and Renata swallowed without taking her eyes off his. She ran her thumb over the corner of her mouth and collected a drop that had escaped.

She straightened her dress and stood.

—Thank you—Andrés said, in the tone of someone who truly meant it.

The real contact arrived twenty minutes later.

***

The woman crossed the room from the far end with the calm of someone who knew exactly how much space she occupied. Black hair cut to her jaw, gray-green eyes that seemed to process everything at once. A burgundy silk dress that made no effort whatsoever to go unnoticed. She approached Renata with a glass in her hand and looked directly at her.

—My name is Nadia. I know who you are and what you’re looking for—she said in Spanish without any identifiable accent. —Come with me. What you need to know isn’t in this room.

She took her to a room on the second floor, decorated with dark tapestries of geometric designs and low, warm lighting that turned everything into intimate shadow. A four-poster bed stood in the center. A velvet chaise longue sat beside the window. Heavy curtains blocked out the sounds from outside.

Nadia closed the door and kissed her without preamble.

Renata responded after a second. She had been with women before, not many times, but enough to understand that the dynamic was different: more attention, more reading of the other person’s body, more presence in every gesture. Nadia undressed her with deliberate slowness, kissing her neck and collarbone, nibbling the edge of her left shoulder. When she released the dress and it fell to the floor, she stepped back and looked at her.

—Open your eyes—she said. —I want you to see everything.

Nadia undressed too, unhurriedly. There was nothing beneath the silk dress. Her tits were high and round, with dark, already-hard nipples, and a shaved pubis revealing pink, gleaming lips. She came closer and took Renata’s tits in both hands, squeezing them gently, running her thumbs over the nipples until Renata arched her back. She bent down and sucked them, one at a time, with more care than Jan had shown but an insistence that drew a low moan from Renata.

Nadia moved lower, kissing her belly, knelt in front of her, and opened her pussy lips with her fingers. She looked for a second, as if studying something beautiful, and then ran her tongue over Renata’s clitoris with almost torturous slowness.

—You’re soaked—Nadia murmured against her. —Those men in the salon didn’t know how to use you.

She took her to the bed and laid her on her back. She lifted Renata’s legs, resting her knees on her shoulders, and buried her face between her thighs. She licked Renata’s entire pussy, long and slow, then focused on the clitoris with the tip of her tongue, then pushed her tongue inside as if it were a small cock. She worked the clitoris with her thumb while licking the entrance. She gently bit the outer lips. She ran her tongue from Renata’s ass to her clitoris in one motion that made Renata close her eyes with a broken moan.

—Open your eyes—Nadia repeated without stopping what she was doing.

Renata opened them. She looked at Nadia between her legs, her lips glistening with wetness, her gray eyes fixed on her, and that was what finally pushed her over the edge.

She came with a muffled cry, arching over the bed, her thighs squeezing Nadia’s head. And the woman didn’t stop. She continued sucking her hypersensitive clitoris while the first orgasm was still shaking her, and seconds later she was riding her into the next one. Nadia inserted two fingers and curled them, searching for the same spot Andrés had found before, but with greater precision. Renata felt the second orgasm rising from inside her, different, deeper, and came again, this time gushing over Nadia’s hand and the dark sheets.

—One more—Nadia said, turning her onto her stomach.

She put her on all fours and licked her pussy and ass from behind, alternating between the two while pinching her clitoris with her other hand. She inserted three fingers and brushed Renata’s anus with her thumb, making her vision blur. Renata came three times in a row, with the mounting intensity of something that had gone too long without release. The third time she screamed, Nadia’s hand half-covering her mouth, and afterward they both laughed in the charged silence of the room.

They switched positions. Renata pushed her onto her back on the bed and opened her legs. She started with the nipples, sucking them until they turned red, gently biting them until Nadia moaned. She moved down her belly, kissed her hipbone, and opened her thighs with both hands. Nadia’s pussy was as wet as her own. Renata licked it slowly, learning. She sucked Nadia’s clitoris patiently, feeling it swell beneath her tongue. She inserted two fingers and moved them slowly, curling them, searching for the spot Nadia had taught her with her own body. When she found it, Nadia let out a startled gasp and clutched her hair between her fingers.

Renata returned the attention with the same concentration, without hurrying, adjusting as she went. She licked Nadia’s clitoris in circles, then ran the flat of her tongue over the whole pussy, then returned to the clitoris. She moved her fingers faster when she felt Nadia tense, more slowly when she wanted to prolong it. She gently bit the inside of Nadia’s thigh. She pushed her tongue inside. Nadia came with a low, drawn-out sound that Renata felt like a small, precise victory, and her whole body trembled while her pussy contracted against Renata’s mouth.

They lay on their sides for a moment, looking at each other, while Renata brushed the back of her hand over Nadia’s cheek.

Then Nadia spoke.

The compound, she explained, was an alkaloid extracted from a plant that grew in only one region of the Venezuelan Amazon. In tiny doses it was undetectable by standard forensic methods. Its particular characteristic was that it activated in the presence of a massive surge of adrenaline and endorphins. The kind of surge produced by an extremely intense orgasm. Its effect on the cardiovascular system wasn’t painful. It was exactly the opposite: an extension of pleasure to the point at which the heart gave out.

—And you used it on those men?—Renata asked.

Nadia denied nothing.

—All four had threatened to expose information that would have destroyed people I care about. I’m not asking you to approve. But I’m not going to lie to you about what I am.

—And me?

—You’re not like them. —She paused briefly. —Besides, it would have been a shame.

The door opened.

***

Jan stood in the doorway, his coat still on, an expression mixing the relief of having found her with something more difficult to categorize.

Nadia assessed him with a two-second glance. Then she looked at Renata.

—Shall we invite him?

Renata considered the question for exactly one second.

—Yes.

Jan closed the door behind him and took off his coat. He undressed unhurriedly while the two women watched from the bed, uncovered. When he was naked, his cock was already hard from merely seeing them. Nadia gave a small whistle of approval and gestured for him to come closer.

What followed was different from anything Renata had experienced before. The simultaneity of two people giving their full attention to the same body without either of them ceasing to be completely present.

They began with Renata in the middle. Nadia sat against the headboard with her legs open, and Renata settled between them, her back against the other woman’s chest. Nadia held Renata’s legs beneath the knees, spreading them and exposing her completely. Jan knelt between Renata’s legs and penetrated her slowly, watching the pussy open around his cock. Nadia sucked Renata’s neck and nipples from behind, took her tits in both hands, and squeezed them while Jan fucked her. Renata’s head rested against Nadia’s shoulder, and the two moans sounded together.

—Harder—Renata gasped. —Fuck me harder, Jan.

Jan sped up. Each thrust made her tits bounce, and Nadia grabbed them more forcefully, pinching her nipples to the edge of pain. Renata felt Jan’s cock driving deep and Nadia’s hands everywhere, Nadia’s tongue in her ear, Nadia’s teeth on her neck. She came like that, with Jan inside her and Nadia’s mouth at her ear, saying something in a language she didn’t recognize but that sounded like a promise and a farewell at the same time.

They shifted positions. Nadia got on all fours in the center of the bed. Jan positioned himself behind her and buried himself inside her with a long moan. Renata lay on her back beneath them, her head between Nadia’s legs, and licked her clitoris while Jan fucked her from above. Jan’s cock moved in and out of Nadia’s pussy inches from Renata’s face, and she licked his base and balls whenever he withdrew, as well as Nadia’s clitoris. Nadia moaned uncontrollably, her face buried in the pillow, her fists clenched in the sheets.

—I’m going to come—Nadia warned in a broken voice, and Renata sucked her clitoris harder until the woman collapsed into a long orgasm that made her thighs tremble.

Jan pulled out before coming. Renata emerged from beneath them, licked her lips, and smiled at him.

—Now me—she said, lying on her back with her legs open.

Jan penetrated her again, this time with Nadia sitting on her face. Renata ate Nadia’s pussy while Jan fucked her, and the three of them moved in a rhythm no one had agreed on but that worked with the logic of something every body understands instinctively. Nadia braced herself against the headboard with both hands and rocked her hips against Renata’s mouth. Jan held Renata’s legs open and drove all the way in with every thrust.

—I’m going to come inside—Jan warned Nadia, seeking permission through her.

—Do it—Nadia answered for Renata, grabbing his hair. —Fill this beautiful slut.

Jan accelerated to the limit and came inside Renata in three long waves that tore the final orgasm of the night from her, one that rose from the soles of her feet and shook every inch of her body. She felt his cock pulsing inside her, filling her with hot semen, while Nadia’s mouth pressed tight against her pussy in her own final orgasm.

The room smelled of sweat and the mingled perfumes of three people who had just shared something none of them would mention in any report. Jan’s semen ran down the insides of Renata’s thighs, and Nadia slowly licked it away, cleaning her with her tongue before collapsing beside her.

It lasted more than two hours. In the end, all three lay silent, their bodies intertwined in the room’s warm darkness.

***

Jan organized the operation discreetly over the following weeks. The leaders of the Crystal Circle were arrested in two coordinated rounds with Europol. The case received international coverage for ten days, then the press moved on to something else, as it always does.

Nadia disappeared before dawn that night at the mansion. Through a rear window overlooking the misty gardens. She left a note on the pillow, written in a small, clear hand:

—What you discovered tonight doesn’t belong in any article. But you won’t be able to forget it either.

Renata published the investigation three months later. Four thousand words about the Circle, the dead men, and the network of power operating in the shadows of the European elite. The article won a regional investigative journalism award. Nadia’s name appeared nowhere.

Montevideo’s nights had a different texture from then on. Renata slept well, although sometimes she woke with the image of Prague’s rooftops seen from a window in Malá Strana, and with the gray eyes of a woman who knew exactly where the boundary between pleasure and danger lay, and who had decided, that night, not to cross it.