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station and back to the waterfront, detouring down side streets. What had been unfamiliar in the dark remained so in the wan morning light. There was nothing recognizable about the bland tourist cafés and utilitarian port. The ferry terminal itself was absolutely foreign, a hulking modern structure made of glass and steel. If I had been here, I had no memory of it.
    I went into the terminal and got a ticket on the afternoon boat to Tangier, then backtracked to a drugstore I’d passed earlier. I bought a hair-coloring kit, a pair of weak reading glasses, and an assortment of cheap makeup, then returned to my hotel.
    Marie and I were by no means twins. Her lips were slightly fuller than mine, her face narrower, her nose rounder. There’s a limit to what can be accomplished with eyeliner, a lip pencil, and a little bit of blush, but with the makeup and the glasses and my new hair, even I almost believed the picture in Marie’s passport was me.
    I left my hotel at two-thirty, and by two-forty-five I was at the terminal, a good forty-five minutes early for my boat. I’d checked out the Spanish passport controls when I’d bought my ticket. There were three lines, and I wanted to get a good look at the three officials manning them before I chose one.
    At around three o’clock the ferry started boarding. The passengers were a strange hodgepodge, half tourist, half local. Djellabas and head scarves mingled with tie-dye and jeans. There were two men and one woman manning the glassed-in booths. I ruled out the woman right away. She was fast but thorough, carefully scanning each face that passed, her little pinched eyes glancing from passport to person and back before she pressed her stamp to paper.
    In the middle booth was a young man. Too young, I thought, a twenty-year-old bully hiding behind acne scars. His shirt was stiffly ironed, his uniform neat as a pin. I watched him questioning an elderly Moroccan woman with plastic bags for luggage. When she was unable to understand, he shook his head and gave her a look of exasperation, then stamped her passport and waved her off impatiently.
    The second man seemed to be my best bet. He was older than his colleagues and more relaxed. His tie was loose around his neck, his hat slightly askew. He smiled briefly at each passenger.
    It was the height of the boarding crush, and I wanted to get on before the crowd thinned and things slowed down. My heart hammering in my chest, I fished out my passport, hooked the rucksack over my shoulders, and headed for the back of the older man’s line.
    I hadn’t given much thought to the possibility of not getting through, but as I watched the man mark each passport for transit I began to wonder what would happen if they questioned my papers. How would I explain the fact that I was traveling under the identity of a dead nun?
    The last of a group of young German girls in line in front of me stepped up to the booth, and my stomach fluttered into my throat. The man smiled and nodded. Have a nice trip, he said to the girl in Spanish, then waved me forward.
    Smiling, I slid my passport through the slot at the bottom of the glass. The man opened the cover and looked down at the picture, his gray eyebrows furrowing slightly. I could see him squinting to read the information; then his eyes shifted upward to my face and back down toward the photograph.
    â€œJust a moment,” he said in pleasant but firm Spanish. Closing my passport, he stepped away from the window.
    This is it, I thought, watching his back disappear through an unmarked door, the passport in his hand. Someone grumbled in the stalled line behind me. Should I run? I wondered, glancing back toward the stairs that led down to the main terminal. A pair of policemen lingered on the landing. Maybe I could just walk away, I told myself, slip out unnoticed. I was half turning to go when the door opened and the man reappeared.
    â€œIs there a problem?” I asked,