Walkthroughs: Secret Files 2: Puritas Cordis Walkthrough

Indonesia

Max is now in the dark temple interior. Use the hard hat (which comes with a headlight) on him to shed some light on the matter. You’ll find an ancient control panel against the left wall. This consists of three rows of eight buttons each. You’ll need to press the correct button in each row correctly in order to remove an interior wall and thus obtain access to Sam’s cage. (Don’t worry about the closed door and niche to the right. Max uses these automatically at the appropriate time.)

The wall painting to the right of the console provides a key. But it’s difficult to interpret with the naked eye (though it can be done). Different symbols in different colors appear to have been intermingled here and while it’s easy to pick out one from its distinctive “dot inside a Y” configuration, the other two are vaguer. Can anything be done in the name of clarity?

Yes. You already have two colored filters in inventory -- the green balloon and the blue flag -- and you can cobble together a third by dipping the donut cellophane in the red dye in the kettle. Look at the wall painting and then simply use each filter on the hard hat in turn to reveal the hidden symbols.

But which goes in which row on the console? That’s laid out for you, too. Just use the order in which they appear on the list of planets you found beside the table at the campsite: Venus, Juno and Neptune. The first is the fourth from the right in the top row, the second the second from the left in the middle row and the third the second from the right in the bottom row.

Once you’ve pushed the correct buttons, a wall slides back and you’ll find you have access to the apertures in the stone face behind Sam and can now pass her items through the hole at the bottom. (Control now switches to Sam, but you can switch between the characters at will.)

One notable change since the last segment: Probably as a result of the flare incident, the fruit bowl is no longer directly accessible from Sam’s cage. (It is within throwing distance, however.) Sam must now ask the guard for fruit -- and the guard won’t supply any. He just uses each such request as an occasion to help himself to whatever it was that Sam wanted.

As it happens, that’s a valuable bit of info.

Sam can’t do anything on her own, so this would be a good time to run though Max’s inventory with right-clicks in search of items Sam might find more useful. You’ll stumble upon one: the white berries. Sam can’t identify the white-berry bush at this distance and Max is clueless as to the fruit’s potential uses. “Unlike Sam, I don’t know the first thing about botany,” he says.

But pass the berries to Sam through the hole and right-click on them in her inventory to learn the region’s indigenous population uses the berries to induce trances. In other words, if you could get the guard to eat one, it’d help take him out of the equation.

This requires some subtlety. Sam can toss a white berry into the bowl and then request one. But though freaked out by the stone face, the guard isn’t a total idiot. He doesn’t know what the berries are and he’s not about to try something he can’t identify.

Maybe you could disguise the berry. Have Max pass Sam the bamboo tube and then have Sam use the tube on the fruit bowl as a makeshift straw. She’ll suck up a raspberry. (Given the length of the tube, that’s a pretty amazing level of suction Sam has there!) Use the white berries on this raspberry and then toss the sabotaged raspberry back into the bowl. Ask the guard for a raspberry and, like clockwork, he’ll vindictively eat what Sam’s requested -- and almost immediately begin to feel funny. Already freaked out by the voice inside the stone face, he now thinks he sees the face move.

That’s a clue for your next move. Send the guard over the edge. Bring the stone face to life. As Max, use the glow sticks on the statue’s nostrils and the little frog on its mouth (in that order) and the guard runs off -- leaving behind an odd square item (collected automatically by Max after his reunion with Sam) that opens the door in the temple.

A spasm of non-interactivity here: Max dispatches Sam to summon the authorities while he checks out the temple. He’s just used the odd square item in the niche and found a nuke behind the door -- Zandona’s prophecies are apparently self-fulfilled -- when a second guard returns to camp and reports finding Sam and her guard missing. The bomb goes live and drops into the lava below,. The mountain doesn’t so much erupt as disintegrate. And Max, escaping the blast, runs smack into a pair of guards.

Odds & ends: Inside the temple, Max can examine the closed door, the niche and the red glow beneath the door. Using the hole in the stone face, Sam can hand her compass to Max -- this never does find a use -- and Max most of his inventory to Sam. Exceptions: the hard hat (which would leave him in the dark), the teapot and Rafflesia (both too big for the hole) ... and Nina’s picture. (Max is sentimental.)

A couple of curiosities will surface in Sam’s survey of these items. Have her look at the blue flag and she’ll offer, “Good thing Max doesn’t know what kind of flag this is.” The implication seems to be that it’s related to ex-girlfriend Nina -- and hence to Secret Files: Tunguska -- but this is never explained.

If you right-click on the plain cellophane bag (post-donut) while it’s in Nina’s possession, you’ll crash the game. Evidently the developers left out Sam’s description. However, if you pass her the red-stained bag, Sam says, “Red foil ... Max must have been pretty bored.” (Also, is it just my filthy mind, or does the red-stained cellophane look like a condom wrapper?)

You can’t identify them now -- they’re not wearing their night-vision goggles -- but the epilogue makes clear the guards Max encounters at the end of the segment are Wedge and Biggs from the game’s first scenes.


Gatineau

Korell turns over to Nina an odd sketch that was included with Sister Elise’s letter. He’ll continue to try to decipher the document while Nina searches the ruins for references to a saint.

Note the surveyor nearby. You don’t have to deal with him right now, but he’ll prove instrumental in your search.

Head down and left to the snack truck. Here you can take a paper cup and aluminum foil from the ground and as many as four fortune cookies from the bowl on the counter. (You’ll have to open each in turn and read its fortune in order to take the next.)

Continue down and left to a crossroads. Activate the small table beside the construction shack to claim four items -- pocket knife, “spirit level,” power cable and cloth pouch -- and also take the mirror from the wall above. Then one more time down and left to an unusual side view where you’ll find a gesturing statue.

Before Nina can inspect the plaque at its base, Korell shows up and reads it for her: “Saint ... something. His name is barely discernible.” He’ll turn over the translation of the sister’s letter -- meaning you can watch at will the cut-scene of the nun writing it -- and you’re free to look for the next clue when Korell looks for his reading glasses.

Don’t look for revelations in the letter. The cut scene is still what it was earlier. Apparently the idea here is to remind the player about the statue. Right-click on it for a closeup view and again on the left arm to learn it’s pointing back toward the ruins. Exactly where in the ruins it’s hard to say. It’d be easier to tell if you could follow the arm.

You can: Place the “spirit level” on the statue’s left arm and follow the red beam to the right.

One screen over, you’ll find it blocked on a signpost. But the sign atop the post can be turned and by turning it left three times, you can align it with the beam. If you’ve set it up correctly, Nina says when you exit from the turning menu that the sign is in line with the statue’s pointing arm.

Alas, this doesn’t permit the beam to continue on its merry way. (It’s still stopped by the post itself.) But grab the laser back from the statue and place it atop the realigned signpost and you can follow it to the right again.

Oy. Now it’s stopped by the sign atop the snack truck. Can the truck be moved?

Initially, there’s no one in the truck. (A sign propped up on the counter reads, ”Be right back.”) However, once Nina places the spirit level atop the signpost, the sign is replaced by a sleeping Chinese man.

Talk to the proprietor to learn that, under his contract, he’s required to remain here until all construction workers on site -- today, just the the surveyor back at your starting location -- call it a day. Asking him to move his truck forward a few feet is not an option.

But maybe you could chase him away ahead of schedule. You just manipulated one sign. Could you mess with others?

Sure. There are two that can be removed and reinstalled elsewhere and a third that can be cannibalized for parts.

Bottom line: You want to give the surveyor the impression his nice shiny SUV, parked over on the left side of the signpost screen, is in jeopardy from a rock slide. To save yourself multiple attempts -- there are as many as three different unsuccessful results -- you’ll want to make your case especially persuasive and take advantage of the surveyor’s naturally superstitious bent.

Step One: At the right side of the starting location, rocks have tumbled down the slope. Use the pen knife to remove the “rock slide” sign from the post nearby and the parking sign on the left at the signpost screen and reinstall the rock slide sign in the parking sign’s original position.

Step Two: See the plastic boulder on the right side of the “Lazare Construction” sign to the right of the shack on the signpost screen? This is tangible evidence to back up the rock-slide sign’s warning (as long as the surveyor doesn’t look at it too closely). Use this versatile knife to detach the boulder from the sign and place it in the wrecked car just in front of the surveyor’s SUV.

However, this isn’t enough. If you warn the surveyor about the risk to his vehicle with only the rock slide sign, only the boulder or both sign and boulder in place, he’ll blow you off. His horoscope said he’s going to have a good day and that carries a lot of weight with him. So ...

Step Three: ... play off the surveyor’s faith in the stars.

Did you go through the fortune cookies yet? Take one and use it on Nina. She’ll eat it and read the fortune. Take another and do it again. Then a third.

Ah. This one has an relevant message: “If you ignore the warning and disregard your neighbor’s misfortune, disaster will strike you also.”

The warning is the rock-slide sign and the neighbor’s misfortune is covered by the boulder in the back seat of the derelict car.

But how do you deliver a previously-owned fortune? (The surveyor will blow that off, too.) It’s got to be in a cookie.

Like the snack-truck owner has anything better to do? Give him the third fortune and he’ll put it into a new cookie for you. Hustle back to the surveyor and lay the fresh cookie on him. Then ask him (twice, if you haven’t previously broached the subject) about the SUV. You’ll both reappear on the signpost screen and the surveyor will be sufficiently impressed by the confluence of contrived events to move the vehicle. Now just scoot back to the snack truck and report that the surveyor’s vehicle in no longer in evidence. (If you haven’t raised this topic, this’ll be the right-hand snack-truck icon.) The operator drives away, the beam finds a new obstacle ... and then vanishes entirely!

The battery’s dead. A replacement is right here. The beam was pointing at the kiosk for the under-construction theme park. Below the buttons to the right is a flap. If you’ve already used the kiosk, pressing one of the three buttons, you can now pry the flap open it with your all-purpose pocket knife. (If not, Nina will do so automatically.)

Batteries! Nina takes them automatically. Head left. You can use them in the “spirit level” in its position atop the sign and the beam reappears.

But how are you going to get the beam past the immovable kiosk? Bend the beam around it You have the mirror from the construction shack. Use the power cable on the mirror -- it becomes a support wire -- and then suspend the mirror from the hook to the left of the kiosk.

Hmmm. It doesn’t quite intersect with the beam. Perhaps if you weighted one end? Everything in your inventory is too light for this purpose -- save the parking sign, which is too large -- but you can change the weight of one item. Load up the cloth bag with loose soil from any of the three molehills around the kiosk, place this atop the dangling mirror and it reflects the beam into the ground beneath the kiosk. Now you just have to straighten it out again, and the aluminum foil you found near the snack truck will do nicely. Use it on the molehill below the kiosk and the beam goes its merry way. Move right again, and you’ll find it pointing at a pile of rubble. (Then it vanishes gain, but that’s OK. It’s done its job.)

The rubble’s too heavy to move without help. Maybe the surveyor? If you’ve talked to him, he’s mentioned he’s looking for archaeological relics. But you can’t direct his attention to a nondescript pile of rubble. You’ll have to make it less nondescript first. A paper cup wrapped in foil might look like a silver goblet to the untrained eye. Use it on the rubble pile to insert it into a recess, then talk to the surveyor again about relics. He heads off to his SUV to retrieve rubble-clearing material -- it exposes a small door in the hillside -- and then heads off to try to sell the silvery cup to his Paris fence. Activate the iron ring in the door’s left side to enter.

Here you’re up against two stand-alone puzzles -- one involving the stone disks in the far wall and the other an array of lettered keys atop the wine barrel on the left. You’ll have to complete the first to attempt the second.

The first is fairly simple. Each of the three overlapping discs has a roughly triangular gap in place of the “I” symbol. You need to manipulate the three dials at the bottom of the screen so the three gaps intersect.

The dials don’t all move the discs in the same way. The lower-left disc, controlled with the left-hand dial, moves clockwise one space at a time for each left-click on the dial. The top disc, controlled via the middle dial, moves the same way -- but it simultaneously moves the lower-left disc one space counter-clockwise. And the lower right disc, controlled by the right dial, simultaneously moves the lower-left disk a space counter-clockwise and the top disc two spaces clockwise.

From this, it’s easy to deduce a successful approach. The lower-right disc causes the most problems, so you want to move it as little as possible. Get it out of the way first. Click the right dial five times to move this disc into the correct position. Now you can leave it alone.

The top disc has an issue with another disc, too -- and not the one we’ve just moved-- so get it out of way next. Click the middle dial once.

Finally, click the left dial four times.

That’s it. You should see a signet ring in the gap. Take it, back out of the puzzle and right-click on the wooden board atop the wine barrel. Insert the ring in the indentation at the left to unlock the lettered keys.

Korell chooses this moment to reappear. He tells Nina that the plaque identifies the statue as Saint Austrebert of Roen. Which settles the issue of what code word you need to spell out (Austrebert) but not how to go about it.

It’s easy enough to spell out the name with the keys here, but the mechanism atop the wine barrel is more minefield than typewriter. There’s one correct path and unless you make use of Sister Elise’s documentation, you won’t get far.

Right-click on the sketch Korell provided earlier in this segment to display it alongside the puzzle. This diagram reveals the inter-connections between the 16 keys. Each key you press in spelling the name must possess a link to the key that comes next. If those links aren’t present, the game will reject your solution and the puzzle will reset.

It’s not difficult if you map it out in advance. The trick, inasmuch as the puzzle has a trick, is that you’ll use each of the last three letters twice.

Start with the “A” between the two Us in the top row (left side).
Then select the “U”at the puzzle’s far left side.
Then the “S” directly to the right of it.
Then the “T” at the top of the puzzle.
Then the “R” below and to the right of the “T.”
Then the “E” at the far right side of the puzzle.
Then the “B” below and to the left of the “E.”
And now just retrace your steps for the final E, R and T.

And now you’re in for a great deal of talking.

The near end of the barrel flips open and Nina waxes wroth at the poor payout: “a letter and some scraps of leather full of holes?”

The letter is a followup message from “a certain Bernard” to a Cardinal Coubertin and leather is a decoder -- an overlay that, used with parchments delivered to the cardinal earlier, would expose Zandona’s plans. As we guessed earlier in Indonesia, his prophecies are of the self-fulfilled variety. It’s Zandona’s Puritas Cordis sect that destroyed Gatineau 350 years ago. And now it appears a revived Puritas Cordis means to complete the prophet’s work in bringing the world to the brink. This sets up the next destination: the secret archives at the cardinal’s Parisian estate. If you can learn the sect’s plans, you might be able to head them off.

Odds & ends: At the starting location, you can examine the surveyor and try to use the path back to the boat. At the snack-stand screen, you can examine the right-hand of the two construction vehicles in the background and try to use the hook (sans mirror). At the signpost screen, you can examine the Lazare sign and the trailer and try to use the trailer and both vehicles.

You can examine the plaque at the base of the statue and, in the close-up view, examine the statue’s other appendages. The only other one out of the ordinary is the saint’s right arm. What’s he holding? From this angle, they look like toes on a large foot ... or perhaps rocks. (Then again, at the time the statue was erected, it’s unlikely the rocks that conceal the entrance to the hidden cache had tumbled down to their present location.)

The parking sign can be used on the post in the starting area (successfully) and Nina can try to use the plastic boulder on the SUV and fortune cookies on Korell and the snack-stand proprietor and the fortunes they contain on Korell.

And the pocket knife proves even more versatile than we’ve already demonstrated. It can be used to open fortune cookies and thus spare Nina the need to choke them down. On the signpost screen, you can also try to use it on the trailer, the signpost and the “Lazare” portion of the big sign. And in the statue close-up, you can use it on various appendages -- with the most striking response attached to the head.

The fortunes are always the same. The three others read:

1) “If the crane flies upside-down at half past seven, fate will smile on the bearded.”

2) “When the siren sounds as the day’s labor begins, note the path of the hungry -- even if the deceptive thirst springs from above.”

4) “Beware, for the long hand follows the short hand incessantly, until its time runs out.”

Each can be embedded in a cookie and fed to the bearded surveyor ... and none of them influence him in any way.


Puritas Cordis Base

The scene shifts to an imprisoned Max being questioned by sect leader Shelton. (We’re not told where at this time, but you’ll identify the location as the Puritas Cordis base in the game’s final sequences.) Under threat of death , he identifies Nina and their past relationship, but can’t supply her whereabouts or plans. His impatient captor indicates he’ll return.


Paris

Nina and Korell find the cardinal’s estate in ruins. At first, there’s not much to see. You can exit the starting area and dip into the compost heap outside to find a candle and a pencil-like stick. But Nina won’t venture left into the city or right into the cemetery.

The only other draw is the blue stone at the base of the column at the starting location. Left-click on it. Nina pulls it out, but falls backward in the act and breaks through the surface into a hidden room.

There’s a puzzle down here. Some letters in the legend “Institutio viae est finis” (“Standing still is the end of the path”) on the back wall can be manipulated. This can be solved and the exit in the left wall opened now, jumpstarting the next sequence, but this will be supremely difficult without the hints a few paragraphs below.

Left-click on the hole’s edge to start screaming for help. A homeless man comes to Nina’s rescue -- lowering a pew (visible to the left at the beginning of the segment) to serve as a ladder.

Talk to the man again when you regain the surface. Conveniently, he’s a student of history and knows something of both the cardinal and the strange curator who survived him -- including that the curator was named Michel (or something similar) and is buried in the cemetery here.

Now you can make your way right into the graveyard. It’s very organized -- even infuriatingly so! At the first intersection, you can the select one of three sections: graves from the 1650s, 1660s and 1670s. You’ve already established the curator died a decade after the cardinal passed away in 1663, so you want the 1670s.

At the next junction, you’ll find sections for rich and poor. The homeless gent referred to the curator’s “squalid basement dwelling,” so presumably he was poor (or just sloppy).

At the next, sections for the young and old. The curator served the cardinal for 40 years, so old.

A final junction has sections for men, women and families. The homeless man referred to the curator as “he” throughout.

But you’re not going to find the curator in the men’s section. Try the women’s section instead to find a large stone for Michelle de Saint-Maillefert with three letters out of skew: the “S” and “a” in “Saint” and the “f” in Maillefert. Note the exact positions of these letters: the “S” halfway between 9 and 12 o’clock, the “a” at 3 and the “f” halfway between 6 and 9.

Return to the starting point, drop down the hole and look at the rear wall. Adjust all instances of those three letters -- three of the “S” and one each of the “a” and “f” -- to the appropriate positions and a door opens in the left wall. (Note that the first “I” in “Institutio” and the “n” in “finis” can be turned as well. They don’t have a place in the puzzle, but their positions don’t interfere with its solution.)

The passage beyond leads down a flight of stairs to a deep chasm and another puzzle -- one that can’t be solved at this time. Look at the mosaic on the floor at the foot of the stairs. There are five empty squares in this 4 x 4 grid. You can fill one of them with the blue stone you pulled from the column up above. But what of the other four?

Return to the surface and talk to your new friend about “Mosaic.” He offers that cast-off stones from bombed buildings -- including those from the estate -- were used in the post-war reconstruction of a nearby bridge, a Metro station, a jail and the zoo -- the last of which is currently closed. He’ll provide you with a tourist map and mark the relevant sites . (“Cemetery” takes you back to the cardinal’s estate.)

You’ll find yourself at the closest of the four sites: a bridge over the Saint Martin Channel. You can also visit the jail and the abandoned Metro station, but the Metro station is the only other spot where you can transact meaningful business at this stage.

None of the stones are immediately visible, but you can locate one right now -- right-click on the door of the right-hand cell at the jail to learn it's embedded in a wall-- and get a good sense of where the bridge stone must be concealed.

While the right side of the bridge is spotless, the left is covered with leaves, with a “dirt” hotspot along the upper railing. And it’s likely to stay dirty for a while. If you talk to the street sweeper at the right, he’s holding off cleaning the left end until the rain there stops.

You won’t be able to change his mind -- events have to take their course -- but note the presence of a puddle near his position. If a car were to come along, he’d get wet and then have no reason to avoid the rain.

Note also the ducks in the distance. They’ll come into play when you reach the zoo. And dip into the trash heap nearby to come with a 5-cent piece (actually, it’s a 5-Euro coin) and a pacifier.

Try the Metro. You can use the map or simply walk right from the right end of the bridge. (While the other locations are spread out, these two adjacent ones are directly connected.) Talk to Alessandro Rossi outside the station to establish that he’s rented the red sports car in the background to impress his in-bound friends (for whom he is waiting).

Enter the station and take the teddy bear at the far end and the umbrella to the right of the gum machine. Right-click on the umbrella in inventory to get a sense of its potential uses: Namely, it has a sharp point.

The gum machine works -- you’ll need a 10-cent piece to use it -- and so does the fountain. (You won’t be equipped to get it going again until the end of this segment.)

However, you can solve a little puzzle here: using the station’s stopped clock to set off the alarm on Rossi’s car below. It’s a little confusing -- no clues from Nina here -- but if you put together all the facts you’ve gathered, you’ll realize they connect and that, with the appropriate distraction, you can set off a chain reaction that results in the revealing of the first blue stone.

Inside the station, peer through the gap in the upper left part of the clock dial and then weight the clock’s minute hand. There are a number of prospective candidates for this job in your inventory, but some (coin, teddy bear, pacifier) are too flimsy for this purpose and some (umbrella and stick) too likely to damage the car. The only one that’ll work is the candle from the compost heap at the estate. Place on the hand below Nina, duck back inside and left-click on the clockwork mechanism twice to wind it. Nina automatically runs back downstairs and has a sturdy alibi talking to Rossi when the hand moves and the falling candle sets off the alarm. In the resulting tumult, Rossi misses his friends’ speeding van, the van crosses the channel bridge, going through the puddle and splashing the street sweeper and Rossi, freshly dejected, goes off to be by himself. Nina automatically follows him to a new map location: a park to the northeast.

You don’t have to stay with Rossi. (The park has been written to your map and you can return there at will.) Getting wet has moved the street sweeper to clean up the left half of the bridge and you can now run back to there and use the umbrella to pry out the newly-revealed blue stone from the left half of the bridge. But the stone’s been there for 60 years and it’ll keep.

Take the newspaper near Rossi’s feet -- this has no practical use in the game, but read it to see coverage of the Calypso’s sinking and an ad for Puritas Cordis -- and move left to find a tennis ball on the edge of the sandbox and a blue hoop in the lake.

On a bench at the far left, you’ll also find our homeless friend from the cardinal’s estate. Talk to him about the fountain to the far right to learn tourists used to make wishes here -- this will be the key to boosting Rossi’s low spirits once you’ve visited the zoo -- and about the booze to learn he’ll agree to knock off drinking if you get him something to eat. Also, that the zoo should now be open. (It isn’t until after you talk to him).

Let’s hit the zoo. In the entry area, you’ll find a bottle of red nail polish on the right side of the statue’s base, a soda can on the ground near the left-hand bench and the zoo keeper on the bench to the right. He’s armed with milk and bread, but Nina can’t take either. The bread’s for the ducks who traditionally appear in the lake at the crocodile enclosure and he won’t share the wealth until they appear. But he’ll reveal that a blue stone can be found in the croc exhibit.

Head right to reach the croc. Nina quickly focuses on the stone: It’s embedded in the near side of a circular platform that is currently home to a large specimen. You’ll have to distract it and a survey of your inventory suggests the teddy bear from the Metro station may be suited to this purpose. But first you’ll need some help from the elephant next door.

When the scene zooms back out, grab the noisemaker. It’s to the left near the junction of the paths.

After being on a single track, things have branched out a bit here. You can complete these three tasks in any order.

1) With the noisemaker, you’re equipped to summon the ducks to the zoo.

You’ve seen ducks before -- there were a couple of them in the background at the bridge -- and the noisemaker from the croc enclosure turns out to be a duck call. (It’s not described correctly in inventory until it’s been used successfully.) Return to the bridge and use it on them and they’ll fly down toward the bridge -- the first of three steps in luring them to the zoo.

Now visit the park and use the noisemaker on Nina herself (being that the ducks are still back at the bridge). She’ll run to the lakeside spot where you found the hoop on your first visit and blow on the noisemaker. A moment later, the ducks land nearby.

One last step: Visit the croc enclosure at the zoo and use the noisemaker on Nina again. She runs to the dock at the far left side of the screen and plays their song one last time. The two ducks land in the pond shortly thereafter -- protected from the croc by the fence. Now you can collect a baguette from the zoo keeper. That’s to feed our homeless friend.

But it’s not enough. If you deliver the hard bread as-is, he’ll complain it’s difficult to eat. He has only a few teeth remaining and needs something softer.

Dunk the bread in the zoo keeper’s milk first. When you turn over the softened bread, Nina will collect a bottle of booze.

2) With the nail polish, you’re equipped to cure Rossi’s blues.

Return to the Metro station and use the nail polish on the sports car. (Reclaim the fallen candle as well.) The scratch looks a bit better for Nina’s work -- though the car appears a bit worse -- and now you can return to the park and talk to Rossi about the fountain-as-wishing-well.

Now you just have to connect your good deed with the same fates that Rossi feels are so set against him. Throw the five-cent piece into the fountain. Nina tells Rossi she wished the scratch would vanish and persuades him to reinspect the car. Annoyance seems to replace depression, but he returns to the Metro station and, impressed by the result, then returns to the park and deposits 10 cents of his own in the fountain. No result of course. But he’s out of the park and out of your hair and you can now return and grab your 5-cent and his 10-cent piece from the fountain.

There’s only one spot where you can spend your “dime”: the gum machine at the Metro station. That gets you a piece of bubble gum!

3) With the soda can, you can train the monkey in the exhibit at the end of the zoo’s left path.

On first acquaintance, the monkey studiously ignores you. Stick, umbrella and noisemaker all register as usable, but none has any practical effect.

Return to the zoo keeper and ask him about the critter to learn it’s eager to learn, but responds only when the zoo keeper wields his training stick -- a “regular long branch.”

Return to the monkey cage and use either the stick or the umbrella on the monkey. That does it. The monkey now watches you closely. If you walk right or left, it will follow you to the corresponding end of its branch. But it won’t pass through the hanging tire. You have to match up your actions outside the cage to what the monkey must do within to send the peanuts at the right end of the cage rolling your way.

You don’t have a tire, but you have the hula hoop from the park. This can be used on Nina herself to elicit a cute line, but she’ll have to walk through it as the monkey would the tire. Plant it in the crack in the pavement and then left-click on the hoop to pass through it. The monkey follows suit with the tire.

See the ball just to the right of the monkey? Now you need to coax the critter to throw it at the peanut can. You already have the tennis ball from the park and the soda can from the zoo entrance. You just need a foundation for the soda can comparable to the branch beneath the peanut can.

Easy: Insert the stick from the compost heap into the hole in the pavement to the right of the hoop, use the soda can on the stick and the tennis ball on the can. The monkey sees and does ... and the peanut can obligingly rolls out of the cage.

Okay, where does this leave us? You can now complete two new tasks -- each leading to a blue stone.

1) The booze from #1 and bubble gum from #2 set you up to spend some time in a drunk tank at the jail. (The candle you grabbed back outside the Metro station won’t come into play again until you repair the station’s fountain.)

At the jail, the blue stone can be extracted only from the right-hand of the two cells. (You’ll have to right-click on the door of this cell first to peer through the window and verify the blue stone is there.) And to guarantee that you’re placed in this cell (and to turn on Nina’s pretend drunkenness), you’ll have to prevent the policewoman from opening the door to the left one. Plug up the lock with the gum.

Now talk to the jail officer. Previously, it’s been an effort to get even small talk out of her but with the lock plugged and the homeless man’s booze in inventory, Nina can now pose a question: Can she look at the right-hand cell?

The officer wants to know if Nina is drunk. Select any of the three answers; it doesn’t matter which. The answers amount to no, no and no. It’s pretty clear Nina’s going to have to at least appear drunk to get inside.

Use the liquor bottle on Nina. She backwashes the swill into the bottle, but it’ll give her breath a liquory aroma. Now talk to the guard again. This time, Nina does a drunk act and her boozy breath backs her up. The guard takes a blood sample and, before she can run the analysis, is interrupted by a phone call from her jealous husband and leaves the syringe on the counter. Just use the liquor bottle on the syringe to really sell your story. Evidently Nina uses too much -- her blood alcohol is around four times the legal limit -- but it does work and the guard, returning, puts Nina in the right-hand cell.

Take the burst soccer ball and the spoon beneath it from the little platform to the left of the door and try to pry out the blue stone in the left wall. Nuh-uh. The guard hears the scraping and you’ll have to stop -- until you can enlist the harmonica-playing inmate next door to play again to cover the noise. Click on the left wall to the left of the blue stone to talk to him. He agrees, but first he wants you to solve three riddles. (The game has to throw up some obstacle in your path, right?)

Riddle #1: “The first digit is a number between 1 and 5. Take a good look around your cell. It doesn’t matter how long you search, you will never find the answer.”

In other words , you’re to count up each type of object in your cell -- one chair, one door, one shelf, one skylight, two bunks, two chains, three hooks, four chair legs -- and provide as your answer the one quantity that isn’t present.

The answer’s supposed to be five. (But you can find five of something here as well. There are five bolts in the yellow strip at the end of each bunk. Oops!)

Riddle #2: “They have you trapped.”
 
The answer’s “9” -- the number of bars covering the dormer window in the ceiling.

Riddle #3: “They all stand, but not all of them can walk.”

The “they” is legs -- the four non-walking ones on the chair and the two on Nina herself, for a total of six.

Once the musician has the right answers, he’ll start to play again. It doesn’t sound like a harmonica, but it’s enough to cover the brief scraping sounds of your excavation. Once you have the blue stone. simply knock on the door to talk your way out of jail. This takes a while but, rather oddly, occurs without further player action. (It feels as though a puzzle is missing here. She seemed to be short one lover. What, the designers couldn’t set her up with Alessandro?)

2) The peanuts from #3 above get Nina into the zoo’s croc enclosure.

Elephants love peanuts. Make the one in the exhibit to the right of the croc work for them: Put them in the bird nest in the tree. The big fellow then knocks down the tree so it’s leaning against the wall of the crocodile enclosure.

Now toss the teddy bear you found in the Metro station into the water to the left of the croc. The croc’ll go after it ... and Nina still refuses to go after the stone. She wants the croc to move even farther away first.

This doesn’t require some additional item. Did you notice that when you abandoned teddy to his watery grave, the view scrolled left -- just far enough to reveal a little motorboat? To keep the croc occupied, just activate the boat to start the engine. The croc, mistaking the turbulence for arrival of a rival, will then wander over to the intervening fence. Activate the fallen tree and Nina enters the enclosure, automatically takes the stone and exits.

You’re about out of tasks. Only the fountain-repair job at Metro station remains.

It’s a bit short on info. You’re nowhere told that the fountain simply recirculates the water in its internal system. (i.e. It’s not piped in from the outside.) Hence, to get it going again, you’ll need to refill it -- lugging water in from one of the game’s two accessible sources: the fountain and the park and the crocodile enclosure at the zoo.

And what do you lug it in? You don’t have a conventional receptacle. But you do have the burst soccer ball and that’ll do fine. Ordinarily, a task of this size would require multiple trips. but you only have to complete the first. Nina then automatically leaves the station, the screen goes dark and when it lights up again “a little while later,” the fountain is full.

Now test the fountain using the switch box to the left of the clock mechanism to discover your work isn’t quite done. The spray doesn’t reach the ceiling. You have to increase the water pressure by closing off some of the four geysers. The pacifier from the trash heap on the bridge works here as does the candle recovered from the Metro. Then switch on the fountain again and the single strong water jet quickly reveals a blue stone in the ceiling. Use the umbrella to pry it out.

Return to the estate, drop down into the hole and return to the mosaic puzzle. You’d probably guessed it won’t be enough to just drop the stones into the empty spots. All five stones have to be in specific positions within the grid. These locations are laid out plainly in the legend for the map on the wall beside the stairs.

“The king had withdrawn to Provence ... ”

Unrevealing right now. That’s in the lower right corner, so we know that either the white or black king must appear in the lower right corner of the grid.

“The peasants were rising to the north ...”. The peasants must correspond to the black pawn -- there’s only one pawn on the board -- and since they are opposed to the king, the king piece in the lower right corner must thus be white. Hence, place the white king in the lower right corner and the black pawn just above it.

“... and the reinforcements from the kingdom of Navarre, which had just crossed the border, were forced to go up against a massive fortress to the east.”

Navarre’s in the lower left hand corner, and a unit that had just crossed the border would have to be in Gascogne. Hence, the white knight -- the only other white piece -- goes there and the black castle or rook in Toulouse.

“Meanwhile, his opponent sat back and eagerly watched the spectacle unfold from his country estate in Brittany.”

Easy. Brittany corresponds to Bretagne in the grid’s upper left corner, so place the black king in the upper left corner of the grid.

A bridge then descends from above and Nina, soon joined by Korell, automatically enters the door on the far side of the chasm.

This is the cardinal’s secret archive. Korell evidently has found card catalog or something in his absence, for only a few minutes have passed before he’s describing to Nina what he’s discovered.

Zandona returned from a trip to the Holy Land obsessed with the notion of creating a religious state. He began to preach the apocalypse and became popular in rural areas. You’ve seen the last of his harbingers -- the great flood. They’re supposed to prompt a meeting of world leaders in “the new Babel” -- at which Puritas Cordis will do them all in and raise a “new world order.” Nina quickly intuits that “new Babel” corresponds to New York and the meeting the impending one of the United Nations’s General Assembly. Nina means to alert her father, but there’s no opportunity. Puritas Cordis is here and the two are taken captive. Korell dies trying to buy Nina time to escape, but she’s intercepted below the hole by the Calypso’s bartender/assassin. He takes her on “a little trip to the countryside.” (This suggests the Puritas Cordis base must be in France.)

Odds & ends: At the starting location, Nina can also examine the altar to the right. In the room below, the gap to the left (until the door is opened) and the buried entrance to the right. At the crossroads through the arch back on the surface, the car, the ruins from which Nina’s just emerged and, in the misty distance, the Eiffel Tower.

And the graveyard contains ... absolutely nothing beyond what I’ve already described. (You’d think that, with such an abundance of potential wrong options, something of interest would be concealed back there.)

Inside the Metro station, you can examine the kiosk and the overgrown tracks and, outside, the clock face and the storm drain. This last one is a big tease. Have you ever played an adventure game in which a drain didn’t conceal some useful item? They clearly want you to believe this one does. But while you can test the grate with the umbrella from the station and the stick from the compost heap, nothing works here.

If you take the yellow and red “help wanted” sign on the left side of the kiosk, you’ll get one of the game’s several self-referential comments about computer games. (See the jail for another.) However, you don’t need the sign. It doesn’t do a thing.

At the park, you can examine the statue, the chateau across the lake and the bottles beside the homeless man’s bench.

At the jail office, you can examine the picture beside the door, the gun cabinet, the bulletin board, the trash can and the left-hand cell and try to use both cell doors and the gun cabinet. (This last elicits another self-referential line about “monotonous shoot-em-ups” and how “minigames are strictly forbidden here.”) In the right-hand cell, you can examine the coat hooks on the left wall, the skylight, the chair and the bunks.

At the zoo’s entry area, you can examine the statue and the two direction signs. At the scrolling screen with the croc and elephant exhibits, you can examine the two exhibit signs, the elephant and croc themselves and the water outside the crocodile enclosure.

In addition, there’s a little box on the ground just outside the elephant enclosure that contains traces of peanuts. My guess is that it’s just a clue to what the elephant might like -- aimed at players who haven’t inspected the monkey exhibit -- but though it’s take-able, it has no apparent use (though you can try it out on the elephant) and you can complete the segment without it.

You can try to use the hula hoop on Nina herself; the umbrella on the street sweeper; the stick in the effort to pry out blue stones other than the one at the jail; the umbrella and stick on the Metro station ceiling (before Nina exposes the blue stone); the umbrella, stick and recovered candle on the sports cars; the five-cent piece on the gum machine; the noisemaker on the elephant, the croc (before it’s permanently distracted by the motorboat engine) and a fourth time on the ducks (after they’ve arrived at the zoo); both coins and the peanuts on the homeless man; the booze on Rossi; the soda can on either of the water sources; and the tennis ball on the water in the croc enclosure.

The homeless man looks very like Detective Kanski from the original Secret Files: Tunguska -- a resemblance tacitly acknowledged when Nina questions him at the estate -- she says “there’s something vaguely familiar about him” -- and then confirmed (and expanded upon) in the epilogue.

It’s unreadable in the game proper, but there’s some graffiti on the wall above the kiosk in the Metro station. You’ll need to grab a screenshot and zoom in to decode it. The left inscription reads “Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose!” This oft-quoted epigram by French critic Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr first appeared in the journal Les Guêpes (The Wasps) in 1849 and translates as “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

The right-hand portion is harder to make out, as certain letters in the lower of the two words are unclear. My best guess is “Liberation maintenant!” (Freedom now!)


Puritas Cordis Base

On our last visit, televangelist Pat Shelton interviewed Max and, not getting the answers he wanted, issued some none-to-subtle threats. In this short sequence, Max takes steps to protect himself.

Take the half-eaten apple from the floor of the cell and use it on the trash picker leaning against the stove on the far wall. It knocks it down and the near end falls close to cell door. Take it and use it on the loose stove door and it’s yours.

Sect members then arrive to take Max to a meeting with Shelton. Max and Nina say their hellos, Shelton reveals the final stage of his world-domination plans -- the collapse of a volcano in the Canary Islands, with the resultant tsunami wiping out the US’s east coast -- and the Puritas Cordis leader then demands some answers. He sees a conspiracy against him that involves Nina, Max and Korell and now wants to know who else is involved and the next move of the “Church Intelligence Service.”

Nina appears to have three options here: set Shelton straight, say nothing or “tell all” (i.e. spin a yarn about a vast chicken-wing conspiracy that will satisfy Shelton).

But they’re not meaningful choices. Whichever option you select, Max will be shot in the chest and fall into his newly prepared grave. Nina is shackled and taken off to Max’s old cell where she sits lamenting all the things she failed to do. Boo hoo.

Thing is, Max isn’t dead.

After he rises from the grave, take the plastic vase from the adjacent dog’s grave and the shovel (here called a spade) to the right of the barrels in the inaccessible niche in the rear wall.

The courtyard down the left passage is guarded. You can’t do much there just now, but you can nevertheless inspect the scene in detail from your hiding place. Note in particular the thermometer just around the corner, the symbols inscribed on the bench to the left of the guard and the wild garlic in the lower left corner.

Instead, use the passage in little graveyard’s upper-right corner and use the trash-picker or the shovel on the big mousetrap to secure a piece of smelly cheese.

Then left-click on the farther of the two windows (to the left of the mousetrap) to step into a storage room. Take everything that isn’t nailed down: the camera atop the box at the near end of the central shelves; two empty sacks from the bottom rear portion of the same shelves, the “GameGirl” handheld console in the upper-left corner of the sewing machine table at the right ; the coat hanger above the sewing machine; the battery-operated TV in the far right corner; and the ice spray just to the right of the magazines in the room’s far left corner. (This last one is a little hard to spot, being that the label on the aerosol can is similar to the cover of the topmost magazine.)

The spray’s your path to a somewhat wider world. Max can’t explore beyond this limited region without some kind of disguise. He can’t find one on his own. But once Max has located Nina, they can help each other out.

Her cell is behind the nearer of the two windows in the mousetrap corridor. Right-click on the bars to peer through them and you’ll have one of those quick automatic chats and control will switch to Nina. (As in the jungle, you can switch between the two characters at any time.)

As Nina, click on the door to summon the guard. She can then complain about the cold, her restraints and being hungry -- in the process learning that the guard’s a soccer fan.

Only the complaint about the temperature elicits any kind of reaction. The guard goes outside and checks the thermometer, returns and reports the temperature is “almost 20 degrees Celsius” -- a toasty 68 degrees Fahrenheit.

Implication: It’ll have to get colder in here for the guard to act. (You don’t have to go through this stage before lowering the mercury. It’s just a hint.)

Switch to Max and send him to the thermometer. The courtyard is still guarded, but Max can reach around the corner and use the ice spray to knock the sensor down to 8 degrees (a brisk 46.4 degrees Fahrenheit).

Back to Nina. Now that she has quantitative evidence on her side, call the guard and complain about the cold again. (Dig the odd, shivery voice Nina adopts this time -- as though she really is cold! She isn’t. Max just froze the thermometer.) The guard checks the temperature again and gives her the robe off the prison’s back wall. (Note that the guard is standing right in front of the cowl and that Nina’s in semi-darkness, so if you miss the spoken reference to the cowl, you may not immediately realize what’s changed in the scene.)

Switch to Max, take the cowl from Nina using the trash-picker and explore a bit. Either use the left-hand passage at the starting area or the right exit from the storage room to reach the courtyard outside Shelton’s command center. Take some wild garlic from the patch in the left foreground and have a look at the bench to the left of the guard.

As mentioned earlier, symbols have been carved into the wood here. Max can’t translate. Nina might. But being that she’s locked up, you’ll have to bring the symbols to her in snapshot form, using the camera from the storage room, and the stoic guard watching her door might become less stoic if he were to see Max snapping pictures. So you want him gone.

Easy enough. You already know from the footprints in the courtyard and the mousetrap passage that the guard periodically performs rounds. Talk to the guard about “patrol” to send him on his way. That buys you about 40 seconds -- enough time to take a picture of the symbols but not enough to slip into the prison.

This needn’t slow you down. You can still detour around the guard and show Nina the photo through the barred window in the mousetrap corridor. It’s too dark in the cell for her to interpret the snapshot so first combine the picture with the bright window of the cart-less GameGirl and then use the combo (“illuminated photo”) on Nina. Nina says it’s Russian for “Snow White,” “Soccer” and “devil.”

Your mind may run to passwords, but Nina suggests it’s a mnemonic trick of some sort -- in other words, a reminder for something else, with the “something” presumably being the combination to the electronic lock to Nina’s cell, operated by a keypad to the left of the interior side of the prison door.

Sure enough, each of these words conjures up numbers. Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. A soccer team fields 11 players. And “devil”? The most ready association is 666. (In fact, this is the “Number of the Beast” in the Book of Revelations, and the Beast is distinct from the devil himself, though they are allied in the “unholy trinity.”) If you don’t make these connections readily, check out the books and magazine on the shelves in the storage room’s far left. All three numbers appear there.

But getting to the keypad presents a problem. Nina’s shackled in her cell and the region available for action by Max when he’s at the barred window is a zoomed-in one that doesn’t include access to the door area. In other words, Max has to get into the prison proper, You already know how to make the guard vanish for a time. Can that time be extended?

As mentioned, you can learn from the guard -- via Nina’s “prisoner” and Max’s “Job” topic (the latter reached through “Prison” and”Prisoner”) -- that he’s a soccer fan. (It’s also hinted at by the pictures on the bulletin board just inside the prison door and the magazines in the storage room.) And you know from the footprints that his patrol route takes him past the storage room window. Can you build on those two bits of knowledge?

Sure. Once tuned-in (with the addition of the wire hanger) and turned on, that little TV from the storage room displays a soccer game. The guard can’t see the game with the TV in its original position. But he could if you placed it on the lectern just inside the storage room window, as his rounds take him right past this spot. Set it down there now, turn it on and invite the guard to take another tour of the premises. He’ll remain out of position until Nina’s free and safe

Enter the prison. Use the keypad and the pass code 711666. The cell door pops open and Max leads Nina to the storage room. Despite proximity to the TV, it’s safe here. (The TV is now off -- it will turn out the batteries are dead -- and the guard is back on station at the prison door moping about letting Nina escape.)

However, this is just a way point and not a destination. The next step, with the player controlling only Max, involves getting Nina into the tower.

If you’re short on ideas, return to the courtyard, right-click on the padlocked hatch to the left of the tower door and talk to the newly-installed guard. His “hatch” and “prisoner” topics put you on the right track. Ask about “hatch” a second time for a more explicit solution: The coal chute to the cellar is opened only for a new delivery of coal.

In other word, you need to transform Nina into a coal sack. Just use one of the sacks retrieved from the shelves here earlier and put a bag over her head.

An oddity: Max doesn’t pick up the resultant Nina-in-a-sack, but she now appears both on the storage room floor and in Max’s inventory. “It’s safer that way for Nina, and better for my back,” confesses Max if you right-click on the inventory bag. A blow for realism: Carrying Nina around in inventory would be a bit much. But the inventory icon permits Max to try to use the sack on the tower guard and thus get a hint it’ll need to be further disguised to pass muster.

If only you had some coal. Perhaps you could cook up a reasonable facsimile.

Did you check out the charred doghouse beside Max’s would-be grave? Beat on it with the shovel. Max resisted this as too noisy if you tried at an early stage, and I don’t know why it should be any less noisy now with a second guard posted in the courtyard a screen away. But once he’s wearing the cowl, Max can bring off this demolition without attracting attention. The remains must bear at least a passing resemblance to coal, for when Max uses the remaining sack on them to hide the evidence, a “coal sack” appears in your inventory.

Now, you don’t really want to deliver faux coal to the tower cellar: You want to deliver Nina. So get back to the storage room and use the coal sack on the Nina sack. (This can also be done in inventory, in which case Max returns to the storage room automatically.)

Take the result -- now “Nina in a coal sack” in your inventory -- and use it on the tower guard. He’ll give it a once-over and the next thing you know, Nina is lying dazed at the base of the coal chute and Max is at the cellar window on the left side of the graveyard.

As Nina, take the wine, handkerchiefs and helmet from the shelves near the window and coal from the pile in the upper left corner.

You’ll have to wait a bit to take the gold medals on the wall to the right of the bird cage. The big Amazon parrot in the room’s right side freaks out whenever a stranger enters its view, just as pet birds in the real world sometimes do. You’ll need to first shield Nina from his view.

The handkerchiefs are the only item in either character’s inventory that you can even try, and they’re not big enough to obscure the parrot’s view.

But wasn’t there a pedal-operated sewing machine back in the storage room? Hand the hankies up to Max and, as Max, use the handkerchiefs on the sewing machine to knit them into a sheet. Bring this back to Nina.

Simply using the sheet on the cage won’t work -- Nina can’t step into the critter’s line of sight -- so have Max hand Nina the trash-picker as well. Combine it with the sheet in inventory either at Nina’s or Max’s end and use the combo on the cage. The bird lets out a curious peep and Nina can safely take the medals.

Naturally, the door at the far end is locked and the other side guarded. But Nina’s not here for the door. She’s here for the stove beside it. Use the coals on it and it lights right up.

What’s for dinner? Well, the only guidance you have is from the Russian guard, who can confess to Max now (or pre-escape via the “prison,” “prisoner” and “job” topics) that he likes cheese soup.

Max has cheese and garlic. Nina has wine. Mix it all together in the helmet as “potential cheese soup” and use the helmet on the stove to realize its potential. The helmet doesn’t fit between the bars, so have Max hand down the plastic vase and transfer some of the soup into it and pass it back up. (If Max already handed down the cheese and garlic in the vase, use the vase on the helmet to transfer the contents. ) Pass up the gold medals as well.

The next step almost goes without saying: Give the cheese soup to the prison guard. He’ll take it inside the prison -- meaning out from under the eye of the guard at the tower door.

The tower guard’s already given us the way to pull him off his door duty: Set off the alarm in the prison. That’s the red button just below the keypad. But that’s not going to happen with the guard slurping his soup right here.

So you’ll need to distract him again, and that’s where the gold medals come in. (You can always count on soccer, cheese soup and plain old greed.) Plant the medals in the straw in the cell, ask the guard about “straw” and once he’s occupied with his find, slap the alarm button. The guards from the tower door and cellar come running.

In the resultant confusion, Max slips into the tower and releases Nina from the cellar. You’ll find the two just inside the main door. Max hands off any remaining inventory to Nina -- she should have the camera, shovel, trash-picker and helmet soup -- and runs off to keep the guards occupied.

Nina finds herself at the top of the tower with Shelton. Throw the soup at him. (None of the other stuff has any use, except as unworkable alternatives in this confrontation, so why the hand-off from Max? ) He’ll hold his face, stagger backward and fall to the floor below and Nina automatically moves to the console.

Take a cue from the presence of a guide to Zandona’s prophecies to the right. Hit the red button to activate the self-destruct mechanism and use the buttons on the telephone at the left to translate the letters in “Zandona” into a numeric code: 9152551. (After all, what else could the code word be?) Hit “Enter” on the keypad and Nina automatically removes the keycard and exits the console to find Shelton pointing a gun at her. (Oddly, he refers to her twice as the “prodigal daughter.” A translation issue or a Star Wars-like plot artifact?)

Escaping, Nina automatically drops down to the tower’s middle level. Shelton will follow via the stairs in 15 to 20 seconds. (If Nina fails to leave a level before Shelton’s arrival. she’ll drop down a level automatically or, on the entry level, climb a level using the shaft to the right.)

Drop down again when you resume control of our heroine and you’ll find yourself back on the starting level. Take the can of oil beside the crates to the left and use the shaft twice to climb back to the control room.

You want to slow down Shelton and run out the clock. But if you try to use the oil on the stairs at the left, you’ll find the lid too rusty to open.

There’s another way into the can. If you use the left of the two windows flanking the console, Nina draws fire from sharpshooters down below. Give them something to aim at: Use the oil can on the left window. The guards outside target it and, back in your inventory, you’ll see it’s now “oil canister with holes.”

Shelton’s reappearance will prevent any further action for the moment and Nina drops down a level again. Once again, use the shaft at the right to climb to the top. This time, pour oil on the stairs at the left,. This expands to about 40 seconds the delay in Shelton’s reappearance on any tower level -- and push over the Statue of Liberty at the left to close and block the trapdoor. Then Nina automatically cuts the rope in the shaft at the right (using what, I’d like to know!) and, with the countdown to self-destruct reaching 60 seconds, begins to moan about her impending death

Cue the helicopter, Nina’s removal to the ledge outside (irrespective of the sharpshooters who drilled the oil can) and the last-moment appearance of Shelton and the bartender/assassin above the trapdoor. Shelton cries, “Nobody can escape their destiny!” Nina jumps and grabs the copter’s underpinning just as the explosions begin.

Odds & ends: In the cell, Max and Nina can examine the straw on the floor, the cowl on the far wall and the stove. Max alone can examine the barred window, try to squeeze through the window and to use the trash-picker or the stove and cowl. In the graveyard, he can also examine his grave, the dog’s grave and the cellar window to the left. In the storage room, he can examine the lectern, the shelves at the center of the room and the table at the right rear. In the tower cellar, Nina can also examine the closed hatch. On the entry level of the tower, the door, the crates to the left of the door and the scales to the right. On the second level, the world map in the background. On the top level, the right-hand window and the telephone on the console.

Max can try to use the shovel on the grave, the dog’s grave and both courtyard guards, the trash-picker, cheese and coat hanger on the imprisoned Nina; the cheese on the prison guard; the two separate sacks (Nina and coal) on the tower guard, the Nina-in-a-sack on the remains of the demolished dog house, and the straw in the cell (but only in the final visit). In the final confrontation, Nina can try to use the telephone and Zandona book, the trash-picker and shovel on Shelton, the keycard and oil-can-with-bullet-holes on either of the windows, the leaky can on stairs other than the top-level ones and any inventory item on the scales on the first level.

There’s a third option for placing that little TV: atop the storage room shelves. (It’s out of the guard’s view here.) You can also try to use the set directly on the guard himself and on the bench near his post. Once the guard’s distracted, you can visit him in the mousetrap corridor. (Max leaves rather than give the guard ideas about returning to his post.) And once the TV’s off again, Max can try to reclaim it. (He refuses: “I’m not a diver who needs to carry ballast around with him”)

There’s a map of the compound on the right rear wall of the storage room. No real revelations here. You’re in the room in the upper left corner. It seems designed to focus the player on those rooms they haven’t visited -- namely those pictured within the tower at the lower right. (Note that the room in the upper right portion of the tower can’t be visited. That’s beyond the door to the right of the stove.)

Have Max ask the guard about “prison” and he’ll offer that Nina seems familiar to him. Ask about “prisoner” and “job” and, if you’ve played Secret Files: Tunguska, you’ll put 2 + 2 together. Like the homeless man, the guard’s another recurring character from the earlier game. In that game, he guarded the lobby of the Russian hospital in which Nina was imprisoned (and from which, with Max’s help, she eventually escaped).

You can get an explanation for the dog’s grave from the prison guard. It’s a strange story that seems to suggest either that Shelton does have god’s ear ... or that his gadgetry is as elaborate as his temperament is sketchy.

As at the stone face in the Indonesian jungle, the swap meet at the cellar window allows the exchange of (and thus alternate takes on) most inventory items. A curiosity: Max refuses the coal. He doesn’t want to get dirty.

If Nina examines the handkerchiefs before she hands them off to Max, she’ll identify the embroidered initials, “L.N.” Do we know an L.N.? No, but the possibilities are limited. Only three of the five sect members/hirelings at the base are identified: Shelton, Calypso bartender/assassin Eastman and the prison guard (finally identified in the epilogue as Spivak). So, by the process of elimination, L.N. must be one of the other two: either the bald, bearded tower guard or the guard in the cellar room adjacent to the one with the coal chute. (He’s seen only when you hit the alarm button in the prison or if you ruffle the parrot’s feathers.)

By the way, the parrot’s name is “Polly.”

When Nina first appears at the top of the tower, don’t go straight to the solution. Instead, for a bit of fun, try to either interact with Shelton either directly or by using the trash-picker, shovel or camera or move to any of the discrete locations: the two windows, the shaft or the drop-off to the middle floor. (You can’t use the statue or the stairs at this stage.)

Shelton shoots Nina dead, the game will appear to end ... and then immediately rewind to just before Nina goofed.

The green button on Shelton’s console allegedly changes the radio frequency used to detonate the bomb while the purple one deactivates the alarm at the main gate. You can use both of these and plug in any number of up to nine digits, but neither has an impact on the game.


Epilogue

Nina and Max wind up lounging on a beach and bickering happily over who saved whom. Here we learn that Max apparently shaves his chest and that Sam was never a serious rival to Nina. “I’ve forgotten her already,” says Max.

The developers haven’t. Stick around for an elaborate “what happened next ...” sequence, with status updates that touch upon even the most minor of survivors. Followups cover the UN’s General Assembly; Nina’s father Vladimir; the Puritas Cordis henchmen Wedge and Biggs; travel agent Fleming Olsen; paparazzi Feng Li; obnoxious kid Oskar and the Calypso porter Sidney; Max’s gal pal Sam Peters; the anonymous temple guard and the frog who terrorized him; the snack-stand operator from Gatineau; the homeless man; the surveyor from Gatineau; the police officer from the Paris jail; Alessandro Rossi; the zoo keeper; and prison guard Spivak. The 10 casualties also appear in what seem to be security uniforms from the original Star Trek.

At the end, you’ll get a certificate (saved to the game directory as a .png file) that confirms completion of the game and provides esoteric data such as left and right clicks and meters walked.

Odds & ends: Did you notice that the homeless man also strongly resembles the German actor Klaus Kinski? This is semi-confirmed in the epilogue, where you’ll learn that, after recovering his identity as Detective Kanski, he went on to bang his head on the fountain in the Paris park, lose his memory yet again and became “a famous, eccentric actor.”