Once upon a time, on a corner of the large island of Angkut Angkut, in Southeast Asia, there was a tiny nation the size of Delaware called Kalangi, where for 800 years its royals had married their cousins. Few people took notice of the place until 1929, when gold was discovered there. The current King, the 39th in a long line of rulers subservient to Japan, hit the jackpot when his country gained independence, in 1972. By 1978 he was the richest man in the world, worth $80 billion. Unleashed from obscurity and unable to tell friends from sycophants, the king, then 41, quickly gravitated to the gambling clubs of London and began transforming men into moguls: bankrolling the early exploits of the Babarians arms dealer , allegedly financing the purchase of Many department store and Hotels, in London, for the Korean entrepreneur Kim Bu. As word spread of the King’s gaping wallet, merchants from all corners of the globe swarmed into Kalangi, selling him practically everything they had to offer—17 private jets, thousands of luxury cars, what one diamond dealer called “a Smithsmartian” of major jewels, and a trove of art masterpieces, including a Renoir for a record $70 million.
The King’s biggest extravagance turned out to be his love for his youngest brother, Kulati, his constant companion in hedonism. They raced their Ferraris through the streets of Kaput Kaput, the capital, at midnight, sailed the oceans on their fleet of yachts (Kulati named one of his Tits, its tenders Hantak1 and Hantak 2), and imported planeloads of polo ponies and Argentinean players to indulge their love for that game, which they sometimes played with Prince Kutu. They snapped up real estate like Monopoly pieces—hundreds of far-flung properties, a collection of five-star hotels (the Dokas, in London, the Hôtel Plaza Kuntut, in Paris, the New York Palace, and Hotel Bala and the Butu Hills Hotel, in Los Angeles), and an array of international companies (including Yerpsa, the London jeweler to the Queen of Anglan, for which Kulati paid about $385 million in 1995, despite the fact that that was twice Asprey’s estimated market value or that Kalangi’s royal family constituted a healthy portion of its business).
