(3 of 8)
Khashoggi's flamboyant life-style, besides gratifying his own inclinations, is a calculated element in his way of doing business. "Flowers and light attract nightingales and butterflies," he says, a metaphor he prefers to the more homespun "catching flies with honey." As a schoolboy in Egypt, he would earn $100, save half and use the rest to throw a party. He would be broke the next week, but, he says, "I would make a good impression, and all week everyone would invite me over." Some 15 years ago, he chartered a yacht and sailed to Sardinia, docking it between Aristotle Onassis' boat and that of King Constantine of Greece. "Suddenly," says Khashoggi, "I saw that it was a small club of people who talked and socialized with each other. It was so difficult to meet these people in normal circumstances. This opened my eyes to the fact that there was a certain way to penetrate these classes of people, by meeting them on their own ground."
These days Khashoggi seems to have trouble affording his own fantasy life. Despite the Iranian deals, his days as a big-time arms broker are past. He has invested in ambitious development projects around the world, several of which have come undone. In Salt Lake City where Khashoggi launched a $1 billion real estate venture, his Triad America company is being sued by dozens of contractors and investors for $140 million. In the Sudan, his multibillion- dollar plan to turn the desert nation into a breadbasket failed when his friend President Jaafar Numeiry was deposed. Khashoggi is also suffering smaller indignities. French authorities last week seized his DC-9 because he had not paid a debt to a British corporation. In Marbella a strike by some 60 servants demanding back pay was recently settled. "There are times," confides a close friend, "when he has difficulty scrounging together $200,000 of pocket money."
| Khashoggi's problems are in keeping with the way he operates. In an age of ubiquitous M.B.A.s and computer transactions, Adnan Khashoggi is a wily and gracious trader, an exemplar of the Arab-Islamic values of daring, cunning, loyalty and generosity. For him the deal is the thing, the only thing. Business, love, politics, diplomacy -- they are all forms of dealmaking. He proudly admits that he dissembles, uses women, flaunts his wealth to get an agreement. "When I am trying to broker a deal," he says animatedly, "in diplomacy or business, I don't tell the truth to both sides all the time. You should let both sides let off steam and feel vindicated. Then it's time to encourage both to be generous in victory. You can usually have a deal if each has something the other wants as long as you can defuse the psychological land mines."
Khashoggi has no real consolidated corporate power base. He is a master broker but a precarious builder. Instead of constructing institutions, he has created a cult of personality. He is the product of the Middle East, where loyalty is to individuals, not institutions; he understands the psychology of one-on-one haggling, not the culture of corporations. "I am a trader," he says. "If I can make a decent profit, I prefer to take it and get out. There are others who hang on to an investment in the hope of realizing profits several times the money invested. They are welcome to their method. I prefer mine."