Recovery and the Return of Ethan Hart by Stephen Benatar

saying, I’m afraid that this form requires—”
    â€œI’m not Mr Newman. I’m sorry but it’s a good deal more complicated than that. You see…”
    And I put her in the picture.
    â€œOh, you poor young man!” Mrs Bradley puts on her glasses and picks up my form again—finds nothing there she hadn’t found before—replaces it upon her blotter. She takes off her glasses, sucks one of the hooked ends for a thoughtful moment, then leans forward eagerly. “I don’t believe we’ve ever experienced quite this problem before…although strangely we did recently have occasion to assist an amnesia victim once he had recovered most of his memory.” She holds this out to me, almost literally, as a solid inducement to hope. “But tell me, have you seen a doctor?”
    I assure her that I have.
    Tom makes a suggestion.
    â€œOh, I’m afraid not,” she answers, most regretfully. “You need to understand, there must be millions of passports issued yearly in the U.S. and even if we could transmit a picture to every passport office in all the fifty states, it would be almost impossible to match it up.”
    She smiles at me and pulls a face of deep apology.
    â€œAnd supposing that your passport were issued in 1983, when the renewal period was made longer? Your photo would now be seven years old and, who knows, seven years ago you might have been just eighteen or nineteen…with spots and a crew-cut…?” She shrugs, eloquently.
    This is dispiriting. “You mention all fifty states,” I say, “but doesn’t my accent pin me down to someplace on the East Coast?”
    A short pause. “Oh dear,” she says. “I must confess to being a little out of my depth here. You’ve set me a conundrum. So perhaps if you wouldn’t mind waiting for just a minute…?”
    It turns out to be more like fifteen. She sends us one Mr Herb Kramer, who’s about forty, big, sandy-haired, blue-suited. He comes in alone and shakes our hands with warmth. Mr Kramer is the vice-consul.
    â€œI believe I’ve been made conversant with your plight. I have to say a case like this puts us in a difficult position.”
    â€œNot half as difficult as the one it puts me in.”
    â€œNo, I’m sure.” He laughs, genially. “You see, our problem is we can only provide assistance to someone we know to be an American citizen. You’ll realize that given your memory loss this becomes a little awkward?”
    â€œBut my accent?”
    â€œYes, your accent. People do sometimes come to us with the most authentic-sounding…” He looks at me intently; looks at Tom; looks back at me. “Oh, hell. At a guess I’d say you come from New England. I’m a New Englander myself.”
    â€œThat’s what I’d have said, too.” (On both counts.)
    â€œHowever, I doubt there’d be much value in communicating with the New England passport offices; there’s no way to systematically search their records. But I’ll tell you what we can do. We can send a cable to the State Department on the chance that someone might have started an inquiry.”
    He’s perched on the edge of Mrs Bradley’s desk, pensively stroking his moustache.
    â€œWhat’s tantalizing is to think we could already have received a cable from them. Or from some other post. A caller might actually have been right here asking about you. Every last detail could be sitting there awaiting us. But without a name to enter into the lookout check…” He spreads his hands. “So we have nothing to fall back on but the memories of our staff. Just now Mrs Bradley and I were questioning everyone on duty today. Unfortunately without the least bit of success.”
    â€œThank you, anyhow.”
    â€œWell, it’s our job, of course. Your accent leads us to believe you’re American and therefore we’ll