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ACCORDING TO HER PASSPORT, ENTRY VISA, AND INTERNATIONAL Certificate of Vaccination, Charlotte Amelia Douglas was born in Hollister, California, forty years before her entry into Boca Grande; was at the time of that entry a married resident of San Francisco, California; was five-feet-five-inches tall, had red hair, brown eyes, and no visible distinguishing marks; and had been successfully inoculated against smallpox, cholera, yellow fever, typhus, typhoid, and paratyphoid A and B. The passport had been renewed four months before at New Orleans, Louisiana, and bore entry and departure stamps for Antigua and Guadeloupe, unused visas for Australia and the British Solomon Islands Protectorate, a Mexican tourist card stamped at Mérida, a visa and entry stamp for Boca Grande, and no indication that the bearer had reentered the United States during the four months since the renewal of the passport. Nationality NORTEAMERICANA. Type of Visa TURISTA. Occupation MADRE.

There seemed to me many elusive anomalies on these documents, not the least of them Charlotte Amelia Douglas’s decision to enter Boca Grande, but none of these nuances suggested themselves to Victor, Little Victor, who had ordered the passport surreptitiously removed from the Hotel del Caribe safe because its number appeared on a United States Department of State list indicating travelers who were to receive certain special treatment.