"I'm so glad to see you two," the head of the crew investigating the airplane crash site said to Illya and May. "We found this attache case which we had to blast open. It contains some very peculiar documents that none of us can understand. We suspect that they're more in your league than ours."

As soon as Illya saw the paperwork, he realized that it was exactly the type of plans that THRUSH would come up with.

"I shall have to take these back to the motel to examine them more closely," he said. "If I take half and you take half, we can finish in half the time," he said to May with a grin. She smiled back.

Thirty minutes later, the two sat together in the motel room, carefully examining the documents. As they did so, a deep melancholy fell over Illya. "I cannot help but feel that what we are doing is of no use," he said. "Trina is gone. Nothing we learn about the accident that took her life will bring her back."

"But we have to find out what happened!" May exclaimed. "If foul play was involved, and the perpetrators aren't apprehended, who knows what they'll do next!"

"I feel that, with my Trina gone, I have no reason to keep on living," Illya despaired. "She was the light of my life, my joy, my reason for living. How can I go on without her?" Tears came to his eyes and rolled down his cheeks.

"But she'd want you to go on!" May insisted. "She'd want you to be happy, and more than anything, she'd want you to continue working for UNCLE and bringing criminals to justice. The best way to honor her memory is to keep on doing what you're doing!"

"You are right, I know," Illya conceded. "Yet it is difficult to perform work that you no longer have the heart for."

"As badly as I know you're hurting right now, I envy you," May replied. "At least you've been in love, you've known what it's like to give your heart to another, to experience that powerful bond that lasts a lifetime. That's something I've never experienced. Because of what my stepfather did to me, I've never been able to trust any man enough to let him into my heart."

Illya suddenly saw May in a whole new light. His earlier revulsion was completely forgotten as his heart went out to the lonely, emotionally scarred woman. "Not all of us are like your stepfather," he said tenderly. "I myself would rather die than to do what he did."

"You're such a good man, Illya," said May. "Trina was a very lucky woman to have had you in her life." He saw that she was crying now, tears dripping from her face. It seemed only natural for him to place his hands on either side of her head and tenderly kiss them away. Somehow he reached her lips, and the passion with which she responded flooded his body with a desire he'd thought he'd never feel again.

"May and I went over all the documents in the attache case," Illya told Napoleon. "And they are most definitely plans created by THRUSH for various diabolical schemes around the world. That fact lends credence to the theory that the crash was deliberate. It is my guess that a double agent was involved."

"It certainly sounds that way," Napoleon agreed. "Fear of betrayal would explain the motive. If that could be proven to have been the case, then all that would be left would be to determine what person, or persons, rigged the airplane with the detonation device."

"Which would be, of course, easier said than done." Illya sighed, disgusted with himself for what had happened between himself and May. He couldn't believe that his wife had been dead for less than a month and he'd already made love to another woman. Never in a million years would he have ever expected that to have happened. How on earth could he have let it? Even though Trina was gone, he felt as if he'd betrayed her.

Did the God his wife had believed in really exist, after all? Was there a heaven? Was the woman he loved now in some hidden place far above him, looking down on him and the children? If so, did she know what he'd done with May?

"I'm so sorry, Trinochka," he sobbed. "I never meant for it to happen. I honestly don't know why it did. Can you ever forgive me?"

The only response from above was silence.

Despite the sympathy he felt for his partner over the latter's profound loss, Napoleon also felt excited as he hung up the telephone. The fact that Illya and, therefore, UNCLE, now had access to so many THRUSH plans meant that they could be nipped in the bud before they could be implemented. The irony that the acquisition of such information had come at the price of such devastating loss for Illya wasn't lost on the American. He hoped that the gain of such an advantage over THRUSH would somehow work to salve his partner's grief.

Trina wasn't sure where she was at first. She remembered being on the airplane, and the explosion, but after that, her mind was a total blank. Had she died? Was this heaven?

She found herself in a meadow, with green grass all around her for as far in the distance as she could see. A feeling of incredible peace washed over her, but she soon realized that she wasn't alone. The leering face of the man on the airplane who'd introduced himself to her as Franz loomed before her, and he didn't look nearly as friendly as he had before.