The private life of Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian, often rumored to be the richest man in the world, was as heavily shrouded from the public gaze as the vast, subterranean oil pools on which his huge fortune was built. Gulbenkian, a square, bald man of medium height and undistinguished mien, liked it that way. "I have only one friend," he said once, "and his name is solitude." Last week, in the spacious, ornate Lisbon hotel suite where he lived since 1942, Calouste Gulbenkian, 86, slipped quietly out of the world of the living,...
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