‘No. it’s not going to get any better… You must come! We’ve got something else for you’, was his retort. That said, he walked briskly towards the car without even checking whether I was following. Jacques obviously hadn’t time for patter and I acquiesced by squeezing myself into the front seat alongside him. There were no other passengers.

Jacques didn’t hesitate a moment and shot out of the Sodico building like a man possessed. As with much else that had taken place in the past few hours, it was an unusual experience roaring out of that basement and on reflection afterwards, I realized that it was probably the single most dangerous journey of my life. We were the only car on the road and suddenly we seemed to attract an awful lot of attention.

Jacques swerved, criss-crossed a dozen highways, ducked under bridges and zigzagged in an ongoing effort to confuse those who were targeting us from across the Line. Because we were moving fast, we probably didn’t present an easy target, even though there were chunks of brick and mortar constantly falling onto the road around us. There was no missing the unceremonious pasting as we passed. The Beetle was compact and presented a low profile… for once, comfortably so.

The time that it took us to get away from the Line was the longest couple of minutes ever. Meanwhile, attrition of another kind had begun as both sides opened up again.