A brief hole in the traffic allowed me to hammer the throttle to the floor in third. My heart stuttering away, palpitations that presaged a massive and fatal heart attack. Suddenly, a wavering green mini-bus and an overloaded lorry tried to converge on the spot I was aiming for. Where the f..k was the horn... (Sleighy, ex-KGB turned drug baron, in the back of the Range Rover, interrogating my former boss, a transvestite monster.)

'Where's the lab, you piece of shit? Tell me or you're dead meat!'

'I don't know. That was Somgrai's part.'

'Liar! Thief! The tab's are all mine now. The KGB has taken over your operation...'

Let's see what this cage can do. Ram the gear lever into fourth, throttle still flat on the floor, a huge lurch, the old heap seemed to leap a few feet off the ground, wobbled, but made it to the gap before the other vehicles which veered away in defeat; salutations on their horns in protest. My heart stopped hammering but vision seemed to narrow down to a tunnel of light, blackness all around...

'Come on, you goddamn pervert, cough it up or I'm going to start cutting pieces of flesh off you.'

'Noooo! I don't know anything. You can have your money back but I can't get you any more pills.'

'What use is that?'

Just on the edge of my vision I saw the barrier coming down. It took me a moment to figure we were about to hit the railway crossing at 150km/h. I held the wheel in a deathgrip as the whole car lurched across the track, the barrier bouncing off the roof. We bounded free, heading for the flyover at maximum velocity. I finally found the horn, something off a ship, sounded like hell was about to descend on Bangkok; a miraculous clearing of our forward path.

'Hell, boy, you keep this car steady out there. I nearly cut my own hand off. You can slow down now.'

'Slow down. Can't do it, my body's cramped up and my mind's seized on speed.'

'Boy, you slow down or I'm going to pistol-whip you.'

With an effort I got my foot off the throttle, the car back-fired once, settled to a stately velocity that still left most other vehicles going backwards. My vision started to expand then my hands began to shake fiercely, the car skittering from side to side, as we shot up the flyover, the whole edifice appearing to wobble alarmingly.

'What have we got here, then?'

'Don't!'

'Haven't had the op, have we? I can soon put that right. Tell me where the tab's are otherwise I'm going to castrate you.'

'I don't....Noooooo!'

'Right, that was just a taster. Just a little nick to give you an idea of what it's going to feel like. I don't give a shit any more. The whole lot's coming off unless you tell me where the lab is.'

Sliding down the expressway into heavy traffic, I got the shakes under control, wondering what was going to hit me next. I whacked the wheel over to the left, spun the back wheels as I rammed the gear lever into second and used maximum throttle. The car fishtailed, battered its way into the inside lane, which turning left into Silom had some movement in it. I felt incredibly high just to be alive, pulsing with energy and, er, lust.

'Hey, Sleighy, can we have some rest and recreation in Patpong?'

'It's Colonel General Sleighy to you, boy. We hit the bars after we've secured the lab.'

In front of the Rover, a farang and his Thai whore in the back of a Tut-Tut, the elderly woman laden with gold chains around her neck; a heroin thin youth popped up out of nowhere, pulled the chains off the woman's neck and ran through the traffic on to the pillion of a motorcycle moving in the opposite direction. Before either of the occupants of the Tut-Tut could leap out the bike had wailed off down the road...the woman screaming abuse at the man as I edged the car around them; rivulets of ugliness and despair coursing off her body - the switchblade of modern romance for a Thai woman, if you coupled with enough ugly men it'd run deep into the veins until the original beauty was dissipated.

'Right, that's it, mate. I've had enough, last chance to tell me where the factory is.'

'I don't know....'

The scream nearly shattered my eardrums, the transvestite now a eunuch thrashing about in the back of the Rover, Sleighy cackling to himself loudly. The traffic going into total gridlock before we made Silom. There was a police unit stationed twenty yards away but the layers of pollution kept them locked up inside a glass walled office, fed by the relative cleanliness of their airconditioners.

'Right, let's abandon ship. This idiot can crawl to the hospital across the road and we'll make faster progress on foot. Make sure you have all the tab's with you. Not a bad day's work, we're got around 5000 pills for nothing, which works out at a nice profit.'

Sleighy threw the bloody mess in his hand at a pack of dogs which loitered nearby, unable to decide if they should attack or run for cover; the scent and psyche of foreigners not within their normal remit. Before the organ hit the tarmac, one of the dogs snapped it out of the air with its mouth. Its mates all piled in on him, flesh and blood exploding into the air.

'That'll teach the bastard not to mess with the KGB!'

'F..k, man, this is one hell of a crazy day and it's not even midnight yet.'

'I'm just getting in my stride, son. Just getting in my stride. I've got some good contacts in Patpong, we'll soon offload the merchandise.'

Silom was a mess. Huge pillars for the elevated train took up much of the road; what was left a series of fissures and craters that occasionally opened up and swallowed unsuspecting traffic. A red bus had impacted into the side of an overgrown Merc, the VIP's massive loss of face causing him to go ape. It was hard to tell if he was a gangster made good or a politician at the trough - incredibly fat for a Thai, most of his hair gone, wild eyes and a comical brow that would normally have pegged him as the village idiot.

Every time I saw these kind of guys evil sparked off their bodies as if they were out of place and time, their natural mien the Cambodian Killing Fields. The bus driver was nowhere to be seen, probably fled the scene. I tried to pretend nothing was happening; to stare to invite retribution...