What Happened to Me in Vienna Doesn’t Appear in My Report

I had been married for two years when the magazine assigned me the report that split my life in two. Vienna in November, four inexplicable deaths, and an editor who told me that if I came back with good material they’d give me the whole section. I didn’t tell Ramiro, my husband, what my friend Marcela had told me: that those deaths smelled like something far darker than a settling of scores among powerful men.

My name is Carolina Méndez and I’m thirty-four. I’m a journalist. I work for a weekly in Medellín that every so often sends me abroad when something comes up that requires real experience. I arrived in Vienna on a Tuesday in mid-afternoon, with a light suitcase and my head full of questions.

The victims were four: a Geneva banker, a German diplomat, a Milanese industrialist, and a Portuguese shipowner. All four had been found naked in suites at expensive hotels, with their erections still present, traces of semen on their bellies, deep scratch marks on their backs, and bites on their necks. The autopsies matched: cardiac arrest from exhaustion, natural adrenaline overdose. But nobody could explain the smell of sex that lingered in the rooms, or why all four had ended the same way.

The hotel where I stayed was two blocks from the cathedral. Small, with dark wood walls and an elevator that creaked as if it had been carrying people for a hundred years. I poured myself a glass of wine from the minibar and opened the files on my laptop. I had never been a prudish woman, but I wasn’t the kind who slept with just anyone out of boredom either. My marriage had been dying since the previous winter, and my body knew it better than my head did.

The message reached me after midnight. Unknown number, impeccable Spanish.

—The secret is under the bridge. Come alone tomorrow at dusk to the Schwedenbrücke. And don’t trust anyone who doesn’t show you the widow’s mark.

I reread the message several times. I thought about warning the police, but whoever had texted me knew I was in Vienna and knew my language. My head said it was a trap.

I’m going anyway.

***

The Schwedenbrücke separates the first district from the second. At six in the evening, with the light low and a freezing wind rising off the Danube, I crossed it with my heart in my throat. Leaning against the railing was a tall man in a dark gray suit, big hands in his pockets. He watched me approach without moving.

—Mrs. Méndez —he said in careful Spanish, with an accent I couldn’t quite place—. I’m Mathias Werner, from the Kriminalpolizei. I’ve been on this case for six weeks.

He had green eyes and a slow way of speaking, as if he knew every word carried weight. He explained that the four victims belonged to a closed circle they called Die Schatten der Lust, the shadows of pleasure. An informal society of men with power and money who organized private parties in rented palaces, with clear rules and plenty of willing women. What was said but couldn’t be proven was that over the last few months a new woman had appeared at those parties. They called her die Witwe, the widow. She chose one man each night. She seduced him, left him dry, and somewhere between the last groan and the first breath, she triggered something in his body that left him rigid forever.

While he told me this, I watched his mouth. Mathias noticed and smiled faintly.

—There’s an apartment where we can keep talking —he said—. It’s safe.

***

The apartment was on a narrow street near Stadtpark, on a third floor with windows overlooking an inner courtyard and only one lamp on. As soon as he closed the door, I kissed him. I didn’t wait for him to make the first move. Nobody had kissed me with any real desire in months, and the wait had made me impatient.

Mathias answered by pushing me against the hallway wall. His open hand was on my throat, not squeezing, just marking his place. He pulled down my coat zipper and unbuttoned my blouse in one motion. When I felt his hard cock pressing against my hip over my pants, I knew I was going to fuck that night even if it cost me the report.

—Fuck me now —I told him in his ear—. Don’t make me wait any longer.

I pulled down his pants and took out his cock. It was thick, straight, veins standing out. I gripped it with both hands and stroked it slowly, looking him in the eyes. He hiked my skirt up to my waist, yanked my panties aside, and shoved three fingers into me at once. I was already soaked and he laughed when he confirmed it.

—You were waiting for me.

—I’ve been waiting for months.

He drove his cock into me with one deep thrust. I cried out against his shoulder and he fucked me with long strokes, gripping my ass and biting my neck until he left his mark. I dug my nails into his back and pushed against him with every thrust. I came fast, clenching his cock inside me with my muscles. He held out for two more blows and then came inside me, full, hot, with a grunt that left me trembling for a long while.

***

The following days were the same in variations. By day I went through files, talked to the hotel concierge where the last body had appeared, took discreet photos in the street where the Geneva banker had lived. At night I returned to Mathias’s apartment. We fucked in the bed, in the shower, against the living-room window overlooking the inner courtyard. One morning I woke at five with his mouth between my legs and came twice before the sun came up.

—You’re the best fuck I’ve had in years —he told me once—. And I came here to investigate, not this.

—Me too.

I believed him halfway. Mathias was a man who knew what he was doing with his body and with mine. There were nights when he made me kneel and suck his cock for ten minutes before touching me. I sucked him off while looking at him, letting spit run down my chin because I knew he liked that. He tugged my hair and told me to take him all the way down. One night he fucked me in the ass slowly, after preparing me with saliva and his fingers for a long while, and I came twice in a row before he came inside me.

***

The invitation to the party arrived through a side channel. A colleague at the Colombian embassy got me in through an Austrian friend with connections. The condition was to go alone. The party was on Saturday in a palacete near the Belvedere, with low music, real chandeliers, and a dress code with no codes.

I put on a short black dress, no bra because none of them held my breasts the way the cut of the dress did, and high shoes you could actually walk in. In the hotel mirror I looked at myself and recognized myself less than ever.

The palacete was a series of connected salons. In the first, champagne was served and people spoke in low voices. In the second, couples were kissing against the walls. In the third, people were fucking without preamble on long green velvet couches, and everyone else was watching or taking part. I stood for a while at the entrance to the second salon, glass in hand, watching.

—You’re new —a man’s voice said in Buenos Aires Spanish—. Want me to show you around?

His name was Esteban. Bald, mid-fifties, with the look of a man who eats well and sleeps when he wants. Businessman, he said. I didn’t ask for details. He led me to a small room in the back of the second salon, sat me on a velvet ottoman, and hiked up my dress. He found my cunt wet and laughed.

—You’re ready.

—I’ve been ready for a while.

He pulled down my panties and knelt between my legs. He had a thick tongue and used it with precision. He licked me slowly, sucked my clit, slipped two fingers inside me bending them forward. I came in his mouth with my dress pushed up to my chest and my nipples hard under the fabric. When I was done, I pulled down his pants and sucked his cock right there, him seated on the ottoman and me on my knees. I took him all the way down, until my throat hurt, and he grabbed the back of my neck and set the rhythm.

—You’re fierce, Colombian —he told me when he came in my mouth and I swallowed.

***

I got off the ottoman with my dress straightened and my head somewhere else. I crossed the second salon without looking at anyone. And then she appeared.

Greta. She never gave me a surname and I never asked for one. Straight black hair, dark green eyes, the very pale skin of eastern women. She wore a simple red dress and a very thin ring on the little finger of her left hand with a small black stone. The widow’s mark, I learned later.

—You’re the journalist —she said in impeccable Spanish.

—You’re the widow.

She laughed softly.

—Come with me. I’ve got things to tell you.

She led me to a private room on the first floor, all mirrors and heavy curtains. She locked the door and kissed me before I said a word. Her lips were cold and her tongue was hot. She pulled my dress down to my waist and sucked my breasts patiently, with my nipples between her teeth but without hurting me.

—You’ve got a body worth the trip.

I sat on the edge of a chaise longue and spread my legs. Greta knelt and licked my cunt with a technique I didn’t know: flat, slow tongue over my lips, then the tip right on my clit, then two fingers inside while she sucked me. I grabbed her hair and asked for more. She put a finger in my ass when I told her I liked it, without asking, reading my body. I came screaming, holding her head against my cunt until she could barely breathe.

Then I returned the favor. I pushed her onto the chaise longue and spread her legs. She had a shaved cunt and a big clit, sticking out. I put my tongue in her slowly and my fingers in with rhythm. She came clenching my head between her thighs, biting her hand so she wouldn’t scream.

And then, while we were still pressed together and breathing hard, she told me. The deaths were no accident. The society had decided to clean house by getting rid of members who were leaking information to the police or the press. The method was her. The poison came from an Amazonian root she got through channels she wasn’t going to explain to me. It was triggered by the massive adrenaline surge of orgasm. Undetectable in standard autopsies. And now I was the next risk: a journalist on the verge of publishing what she knew.

—But I’m not going to kill you —she said—. I like you. And besides, Mathias has been standing outside the door for five minutes.

***

Mathias came in with his gun at his hip but without touching it. Greta didn’t move. I still had my dress hiked up to my waist and her mouth was still on my skin.

—I found you —he told her.

—I knew you’d come —she replied.

They stared at each other in silence for a long time. Then Greta laughed, fixed her hair, and looked at me.

—What do you say, journalist? It’s your only night in Vienna. Tomorrow this ends and everyone goes back to their life. What do we do with what’s left?

I couldn’t answer with words. I went up to Mathias, took off his jacket, and unzipped his pants. Greta stood up and joined in. The three of us fucked for two long hours in that room of mirrors. Mathias fucked me while I ate Greta’s pussy. Greta sucked my tits while Mathias took her from behind. We passed cock from mouth to mouth, kissed all three of us with saliva and semen mixed together, came so many times I lost count. At one point Mathias filled my cunt with hot cream while Greta drove two fingers into my ass and squeezed my neck with her other hand without hurting me.

***

At dawn, the palacete was almost empty. Mathias left to coordinate with his people the raid that would end with the two remaining leaders of Die Schatten der Lust. Greta got dressed, kissed me on the forehead, and left me a handwritten note on the chaise longue. She exited through a service door and nobody saw her go.

I returned to Medellín three days later. I wrote the report in a week, handed it in, it ran on the cover, and I got the section and a raise. Ramiro asked me how the trip had been and I told him it was rough, that he’d better not ask. I left him six months later, never once telling him about Vienna. Some things you don’t tell even yourself all the way.

What I did keep was Greta’s note. It said:

—We’re going to see each other again. Your cunt and mine still have unfinished business.

Every so often, when my body is quiet and the night is long, I get a message from a number that keeps changing. It always says more or less the same thing. That the Danube’s shadow is waiting for me. That I should go alone. That they haven’t forgotten me.

I still haven’t gone. But I’m not ruling it out.