“Oh God, I want you. Make me feel. For the first time in so long, make me alive,” she cried, her hands groping at his clothes, tugging him free as they sank down to the soft cool sand.

He felt the quickening gathering inside him as he explored her naked body in the flickering light. He pressed his mouth against the soft mounds of her breasts, grazing her erect nipples with his lips, then down to the dimple of her navel and on down to the soft skin of her belly while his hands caressed her silky thighs and the moistness between them.

“Tell me your secret, now,” she whispered, pulling him to her, guiding him to her center and wrapping her long legs around his hips.

“You’re my secret,” he gasped, feeling the old, familiar yet almost forgotten excitement as he entered her.

“Don’t hurt me,” she cried and then her words were no longer words as they began the ancient rhythm. Their shadows moved and intertwined in the light of the flame like fingers … from the dawn of time.

He must have slept … for a few minutes, because when he awoke, cradled in her arms, he thought he was with Tuyet and the child that last night on the sampan. He remembered how the sentries had refused to let her into the embassy compound to catch the last choppers evacuating the city at the last minute. He had left the embassy and had raced through the city streets, the pounding of the heavy guns drawing nearer as the North Vietnamese prepared to enter the city. The sound of Bing Crosby singing “White Christmas” came from a hundred radios along the way. It was supposed to be the evacuation signal and it became a kind of theme as he ran and he knew he would never be able to hear it again without remembering Saigon and that endless day. It was MACV’s last foul-up because they’d had to shut down Tan Son Nhut airport and there weren’t enough choppers to ferry out anyone who wasn’t American.

They made their escape by sampan that night, with the city full of North Vietnamese regulars and the water red with the reflections of flames along the shores of the Saigon river. Then the VC gunboat opened fire and Tuyet grunted with surprise as a white-hot round passed through her and the baby.

“Does it hurt?” he had asked.

“Titi,” which was pidgin for “a little” she had replied, and then they were in the water because the gunboat had rammed them … and he was flung out into the burning river.

“You’re so quiet …” Kelly said, her voice tender.

“I must have fallen asleep,” he said.

“Are we ever going to get out of here?” she asked, her voice little-girlish again.

“We have to. World war may erupt if we don’t,” he said.

“How did you get into this line of work?” she asked.