Just two years ago, "Baba," as he is nicknamed by his six children, was circling the globe in the dead of night, snuggled under a $200,000 Russian sable bedspread, dreaming like a baby.
The 5-foot-7 billionaire, dwarfed by a 10-foot-wide bed and chasing the clouds on his private DC-8, was lulled to sleep by his masseur and, some say, by a bevy of beauties known in Saudi Arabia as "pleasure wives."The next morning, the valet, barber and chiropractor went to work.
All was well in Adnan Khashoggi's world.
His 12 homes - including a 180,000-acre ranch in Kenya, a 5,000-acre compound in Marbella and apartments in Paris, Cannes, the Canary Islands, Madrid, Rome, Beirut, Riyadh, Jidda, New York and Monte Carlo - were all fully manned.
The 200 exotic animals and stable of Arabian horses were shampooed, the 100 and some-odd Mercedes limousines were gassed up, Liz Taylor showed up at the million-dollar costume balls and magic shows and the $75 million yacht hadn't yet been sold to Donald Trump for a bargain-basement $29 million.
"Baba" also toted in his pockets $1 million as walking-around money and supplied his Italian wife, Lamia, with $2 million necklaces.
So what. Every year for nearly 20 years, the ambitious Saudi had pulled in whopping annual commissions of $100 million, acting as middleman for Lockheed, Northrop, Raytheon, McDonnell Douglas and Boeing - companies fawning over the little man who controlled 80 percent of all foreign defense systems sold to Saudi Arabia.
"But," he shrugs, "I was a lousy manager of my investments - and now I've shrunken," down to his last $54 million, four homes and one small jet from estimated $2 billion holdings of just five years ago.
The Incredible Shrinking Billionaire was dismayed when his $1 billion real estate venture in Salt Lake City went bust, depressed when his Triad America company went bankrupt and angered when plans for a $600 million tourist resort in Egypt collapsed, "because the Parliament," he snaps, "was afraid of upsetting the pharaohs buried inside the pyramids."
Yet he was on the upswing, just beginning to move into growing consumer markets in the Soviet Union and Eastern bloc countries, when he was carted off to the clink last summer by the Swiss police.
"Life is filled with shocks," reasons the longtime pal of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, arrested on charges of racketeering, conspiracy, mail fraud and obstruction of justice.
"I am," he shouts, "INNOCENT!" of charges he backdated deeds concealing the Marcoses' ownership of four New York buildings purchased with $165 million defrauded from U.S. banks, and sold $200 million of paintings purloined by shoe-crazed Imelda from a museum in Manila.
All this for friends in trouble?
"You don't," he reckons, "go kill somebody to help a friend." Nor do you sit in a 6-by-8-foot prison cell with a 30-inch-wide bed in Bern, cleaning your own toilet and munching on food from the nearby Schweizerhof Hotel _ this before being extradited to the United States on July 19, 1989.
"How did I obstruct justice?" he asks.
How, the U.S. attorney counters, did New York City's Crown Building, the Herald Center, 40 Wall St. and 200 Madison Ave. fall into the Saudi's hands?
"I bought them legitimately from foreign corporations - didn't take any Marcos assets and sell them against the law." Period.
He shrugs off a complicated paper trail yet to be unraveled and allows that his "lousy" management skills may have led to a technical mistake or two.
But "Baba," who keeps himself radiant by receiving injections of sheep embryo cells in his derriere, thinks little about the possibility of a guilty verdict, one that could land him behind bars for 10 years.
Not possible. In fact, the high-stepper confides he has a brand-new $65 million yacht on the drawing board. He also talks to God:
"Oh, yes," he nods. "Every morning I talk out loud to God, praying, reflecting. I don't go to a psychiatrist. I am my own."
Free on $10 million bail and seen at parties almost every night, Khashoggi is calm, poking fun at an electronic monitoring cuff wrapped around one ankle: "It doesn't itch and it isn't radar . . . it's nothing," he scoffs.
On this day, Mr. K., signature mustache buffed and perennial tan gleaming, is perched in his $26 million Olympic Tower duplex - a 30,000-square-foot affair overlooking the twin spires of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Manhattan.
"All the prayers of the people come up to me," he smiles, settling back to discuss, for the first time, his crumbled empire and his views on death, reincarnation, religion, monogamy, money and the American justice system.
*****
You idolized your father, who was a devout Moslem and served as personal physician to the late King Ibn Saud. What advice would he have given you when you sat last summer in a Swiss jail?
" `My son, be patient, there's always tomorrow.' "
So philosophical. Weren't you petrified, shocked when the police came to get you?
"I was shocked, but there is a realism in my character that helps me. When five policemen walked into my hotel apartment in Bern to arrest me, I couldn't be hostile or angry. So I invited them to tea and breakfast, immediately creating a confidence. I was not on the defense."
Rule No. 1 for such a crisis?
"Don't turn it against yourself."
What were you thinking in jail?
" `What am I supposed to do?' I asked myself. `Should I pull all the plugs to get out of this box or take advantage of the situation - test my belief in God?' I'm proud that I ENJOYED my three months in prison."
C'mon.
"ENJOYED it, because the test was that I could face reality and allow my belief in God to come out."
How were the accommodations?
"The Swiss jails were excellent, clean and organized with a radio in each room so I could talk to the guard. I didn't feel lost in a pit. But here in America (at Manhattan's Metropolitan Correctional Center), we were all animals trapped in a dirty cage, unable to communicate with guards except by screaming."
Yet you remained calm.
"I believe God put me here for a reason. Maybe if I had continued running around the world, I would have had a heart attack and died. Also, American prosecutors thought that a man with yachts and planes would crack up in the first few days I spent in jail and lie and present false witness to put Mrs. Marcos in jail. I was not going to give in to pressure."
Not going to plea-bargain your way into reduced charges and a lighter sentence by revealing potentially embarrassing details about Reagan-Bush involvement in Iranscam?
"Let me tell you a basic rule: If you believe in a country, as I believe in America, you don't go after embarrassing it for ANY reason. But I'm shocked to see that YOU guys go after embarrassing each other just for the heck of it. It was humiliating to put Reagan on videotape. For what?"
Why do you say that?
"Imagine what you have stripped from this man: After eight years of devotion, putting you together after Watergate, after bringing the Russians to their knees, you suddenly make him an idiot, a fool, just because of his poor age.
"You are now close to the communists. You shoot your president after you're finished with him. This is the downfall of America - not caring, putting on a circus."
How do you view your own trial and the treatment you're getting from the press?
"I have faith in the American justice system, and I was impressed by the care the judge put into selecting jurors. He even considered taking this thing off my ankle because he didn't want it to buzz in his courtroom."
Isn't it humiliating to wear an electronic monitoring bracelet around your ankle?
(Pulling up his sock, showing off the device) "I'm a guinea pig - a specimen - so democracy can examine itself through me."
Are you also a crook?
"No. I would not be able to sleep at night if I was a crook."
Then how did this mess happen?
"Accident of life. Like you fall and break your leg. Happens."
But it didn't happen in a vacuum: Four Manhattan buildings allegedly owned by the Marcoses are now owned by you - the alleged front man. How so?
"There are two foreigners involved - I and Mrs. Tantako, supposedly a close friend of Mrs. Marcos. My transaction for the buildings was with Tantako - not with Mrs. Marcos."
But in March 1986, a federal judge issued a restraining order prohibiting the sale or transfer of any Marcos properties. You're charged with backdating documents to 1985, almost a year before the Marcoses were deposed.
"Even with an injunction, can't people freely swap their shares outside the United States?"
What about 30 paintings that Imelda Marcos had allegedy purloined from the Metropolitan Museum of Manila, art supposedly sold to you as part of a cover-up?
"If I give you some paintings to store or keep, so what? The joke is that these paintings are supposedly worth $200 million, but most of them were phonies and were actually worth 6 million Swiss francs."
Theoretically, would you do anything to help a friend?
"Within the limits of the law. I'm not going to try to lie to put a poor woman in jail."
The poor woman. Both Marcoses have had terrible reputations and stand accused of looting $3.5 billion, defrauding their own country.
"Ask questions about your own presidents. Mr. Nixon was caught; Mr. Johnson was a bit naughty, but he wasn't caught so Marcos was caught, maybe. But look at the rest who are still in power. Are they pure?"