Rumors in Brussels and coming back to Ministerial compound

Continued from here. In case I write a few more pieces, I need to have this be it's own series.

My stay in Brussels was a welcome reprieve from the heat humidity and dust of the preceding months. I visited family for personal celebration, to the Hague, quick jaunt down to Geneva to catchup with old business pals, my mind was set in settling down in Brussels for a while. The days were cool enough to explore the city during the day, the evenings were for writing and personal communications, the nights for lovely dinners and parties. Not that Brussels was a particularly popular party pad, during the weekdays they were intimate, the weekends were a bit more rough but nothing that would compare to Berlin. It was chill.

I have realized during the course of my travels and stays that despite not being a specially curious person, people like telling me things. And they won't begin with the disclaimer to not to share it with anybody else or that it's a big secret, they don't take me seriously and can't comprehend the circumstances under which anything they tell me would get out. They're free-flowing with the secrets, even when they're aware I'm in good terms with the person they're telling me about.

Hanging out with my community in Brussels is how I discovered that the death of the mistress was a much larger deal than it had been made out. Talks of interpol agents already having landed in the country and using their informers inside the police and armed forces were abound. Turns out she was rumored to have been connected to more than one foreign arms dealer, and also intelligence service, a fact that the Minister was aware of but had chosen to ignore to continue his dalliances. "Even if they believe we're acquiring the weapons systems due to her, they can't be so stupid to believe that I'm the only person concerned. There's thirty other people involved in procurement, and if they've provided each and everyone with similar bribes, good for them," he was supposed to have said. The suspicion was that a competing dealer had boffed her out because she was getting too close to success. I didn't buy that, the repercussions of that, if discovered, in their home countries would be large enough that it would wipe away all the gains made during the deal.

As summer turned into Autumn, I missed the potency of the Sun. I checked with the PA who informed me that he was still traveling with only short trips back to the home country to attend important events, but that he had been instructed to tell me that the  Minister would be quite happy if I took back residence at his guest house, it was possible I'd get to meet him soon enough. I packed my bags and two days later I was flying VIP back into the capital. This time there was a small army-police combined retinue, friends I had made from earlier, waiting for me on the tarmac, all of them in their sharp formal dresses and shades. Somebody joked the next time they'd arrange for a cannon salute. I must have looked like quite like an important person, getting my own personal escort from two armed forces outside a commercial flight, and having direct access to immigration and customs! For the first time ever, I felt like a VIP.