The Librarians and the Lost Lamp by Greg Cox Page A

“Take a seat … if you can find one.”
    Rooting around, Flynn found a chair buried beneath a pile of books. He cleared it off before sitting down. The cramped, overstuffed office offered barely more leg room than the plane had.
    â€œDon’t get too comfortable,” she said impatiently. “No offense, but I can’t really spare you much time right now. Like I said, I’ve already spoken with the local authorities, and, as you can see, I’ve got plenty of work to do putting things back where they belong.”
    â€œI understand,” he said, getting down to business. “So I’m told the thieves targeted the Archives specifically. Do you have any idea of what they were after?”
    â€œWell, I’m still in the process of conducting a thorough inventory to determine exactly what might have been taken and what was left behind, but … yes, at least one item has gone missing,” she said bitterly. “A very rare and precious item.”
    â€œAnd that would be?”
    â€œPossibly the oldest existing edition of the Kitab Alf Layla Wa-Layla, or, as it’s known in the West, The Arabian Nights, or One Thousand and One Nights. This particular copy dated back to the eighth century, which makes it a good century older than any other version in existence.”
    â€œWhoa,” Flynn said, impressed. “In Persian or Arabic?”
    He was aware that that no complete edition of the Alf Layla, containing all 1001 tales, was known to exist and that the very origins of the book were obscured by the mists of time; as he understood it, current scholarship held that the celebrated Arabic version had been based on an even earlier Persian chronicle long lost to history. Subsequent translations and variations, including the early French and English editions, had taken the collected stories even further from their roots, to the extent that there was no definitive version of the text, only countless variations comprised of different combinations of stories. There were practically a thousand and one versions of One Thousand and One Nights.
    â€œAncient Persian,” she said. “A sixth-century Farsi script, to be exact. I had only recently stumbled onto the volume while cataloging a treasure trove of old documents captured from one of Saddam’s palaces.” Her eyes lighted up at the memory. “You can imagine my excitement when I realized what I had discovered. Mind you, I’m not saying that it was the original text, said to be penned by Scheherazade herself, but it was older and more authentic than any other surviving copy of the Alf Layla. I was in the process of translating it when—”
    She gestured at the messy aftermath of the robbery.
    â€œThis whole travesty makes me sick to my stomach, not to mention mad as hell. I really wish you could help me, Mr. Carsen, but I’m afraid that one-of-a-kind copy of the Alf Layla has been lost again, perhaps forever this time.”
    â€œNever underestimate a determined Librarian,” he said, while wondering how the thieves had found out about the book in the first place. “How many people knew about your discovery?”
    â€œI’d mentioned it to a few of my colleagues and fellow curators,” she said, shrugging. “It never occurred to me to keep it a secret. In retrospect, that might have been a mistake.”
    â€œYou can’t blame yourself. It’s not your fault that some bad people got wind of the book’s existence. You were just doing your job.”
    â€œI suppose,” she said, sounding unconvinced. “But speaking of my job, I really do need to get back to it.” She stood up behind her desk, as though to signal that the interview was over. “I’m sorry you came all this way for nothing.”
    I wouldn’t say that, he thought. If nothing else, he had discovered what the thieves had absconded with, even if he still wasn’t quite