FROM CAMELOT TO ELYSIUM (VIA OLYMPIC AIRWAYS)

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Onassis spends four or five months a year aboard the Christina, confirming his self-image as a latter-day Odysseus. Old Argentinian friends describe him as a "Vivo"—a shrewd, live-wire operator behind whose enigmatic, almost Oriental facade lies a volcanic rage and a long memory for a grudge. He is apolitical, and indeed could hardly be otherwise in the volatile Athenian climate. Forced to wheel and deal with the present junta for economic survival, he was last week on the verge of completing a $360 million deal to build a seaport, an aluminum-processing plant (with Reynolds) and a few hotels. Practical-minded Greeks feel that his alliance with a Kennedy will probably improve the junta's image and perhaps help Greece's lagging tourist business.

Onassis is not very imaginative: last August he reportedly gave Jackie a silver-filigree bracelet stamped J.I.L.Y. (for "Jackie I Love You"), just as he once gave an M.I.L.Y. bracelet to Maria and a T.I.L.Y. bracelet to Tina. He is no clotheshorse. His baggy suits ("Made in London while he's in New York," comments a Monacan critic) are always worn with a blue shirt and blue tie. He prefers to go shirtless on his yacht, and pays strict attention to his waistline.

Though largely self-educated, Onassis is well-read in classical Greek history and speaks six languages: Greek, Turkish, English, Spanish, French, Italian. A night person and an insomniac, he is a hypnotic raconteur and used to fascinate guests at dinner parties in Hyannisport with his recollections of Winston Churchill. Friends, particularly women, prize him as a perfect listener. Even more peripatetic than Jackie, he caroms around the world carrying only a battered attaché case and a gold-embossed red leather appointment book. Duplicate sets of clothing await him at his pieds-à-terre in Paris (on the Avenue Foch), London (Claridge's), Montevideo, Athens and Manhattan (the Pierre). Under his ownership, Olympic Airways—on which he holds a charter from the Greek government until A.D. 2004—is an ever-ready magic carpet.

For all his wanderings, Onassis is only a superficial sophisticate. His humor has a peasant strain. One of his favorite jokes describes "the noisiest thing in the world—two skeletons making love on a tin roof." A hardheaded Scotch drinker (only at night), he has smashed upwards of $700 worth of crockery in bouzouki establishments, and has been known to snore in a La Scala opera box during a Callas première. Even his fellow Greek shipping kings long dismissed him as a crude upstart. Says one acquaintance: "He was trash to some Greeks, the way old Joe Kennedy was trash to some Irish."

Onassis' canny business dealings have helped fuel such sentiments. In 1952, he alienated his friend Prince Rainier of Monaco by quietly buying up a majority interest in the Société des Bains de Mer, which runs the Monte Carlo Casino. His reason: he had been snubbed in his search for office space. When he finally sold his interest back to Rainier, he cleared $5,000,000. In a 1954 attempt to monopolize the Saudi Arabian oil market, he made a deal with King Saud that would have given him exclusive rights to ship that country's petroleum. He thus brought down the collective wrath of the world's oilmen, who finally brought him to heel.