Zadie Smith's New Yorker Story - a missed opportunity

Zadie Smith story (I think) in current New Yorker, called Moonlit Landscape with Bridge (had to look that up) is good but could be better, which I'll explain. Story is very simple straightforward and full of good but not cumbersome or overwhelming or showy detail - as is pretty typical of Z Smith's writing: a Minister of the Interior in an unnamed Third World country (possibly African?) is preparing to feel the country - his wife and children are already safely ensconced in Paris. There's been some kind of huge natural catastrophe, a storm that has plunged the nation into chaos. So leaving is really a betrayal, and of course a class issue. He says grabs a business suit - worried about the possessions he's leaving behind, which will be stolen or ransacked - and says good-bye to a maid, handing her a lot of money - we learn that they'd had an affair, if you can call such a one-sided power relationship such, while his wife was pregnant. Most of the story is his drive to the airport, through teeming, hostile crowds. They stop twice - first time he gets his suit ruined and loses a shoe; 2nd stop, a thug forces his way into the car - and that's the heart of the story: thug is subtly threatening, and, like the cabinet minister, we're never sure what he'll do. Problem is, he does pretty much nothing. Finally, they let him off, the minister is hustled through the airport, and boards a plane (the thug is outside the fence and shouts "Bon voyage.") Well if this is a piece of a longer work, a novel, as it well might be, I suppose it stands on its own OK and that the thug will play a role later on perhaps. But as a story, it seems that Smith could have and should have done more with this encounter - thug kills driver and works his way onto the plane? Trades clothes with the minister and passes as him? Makes some weird threat or reveals something important? Lots of things I can think of to re-write her "story" for her - sorry, bad habit. But still, it's a fine setting and an interesting enough character, if perhaps familiar (can't help think about Anthills of the Savannah here), but seems like a missed opportunity, too.