The Briefcase

The briefcase was on the back seat of Javed’s rickshaw when he stopped for chai at the Burns Road dhaba at a quarter past midnight. It had not been there when he dropped the foreigner at the Marriott.

It was brown leather, very old, with brass clasps and a luggage label from a hotel in Cairo that had closed before Javed was born. It was also, he discovered when he lifted it, extraordinarily heavy.

“Leave it,” said Mushtaq, who ran the dhaba and had opinions about everything. “Things that appear in rickshaws at midnight belong to somebody who wants them back.”

Javed did not leave it. He sat on a plastic stool with the briefcase between his feet and drank his chai and watched the traffic on Burns Road thin to a trickle, and every time a car slowed down he felt his heart speed up.

At one o’clock a black Land Cruiser with tinted windows pulled up opposite the dhaba and did not move. Nobody got out. Its engine went on running, a low patient growl beneath the noise of the generators.

“Javed,” said Mushtaq quietly, not looking up from the pot he was stirring, “I think it would be a very good idea for you to go home by the long way.”