To the astonishment of a handful of passengers waiting at Rome's Ciampino Airport at 4 a.m., squads of Italian police suddenly materialized and took up positions around the field. Moments later, a white turboprop jet taxied to a stop on the apron. In the plane's door way appeared a young man in the red-trimmed uniform of a field marshal.
Limping slightly from fatigue, his face ashen and heavily bearded, King Constantine of Greece, 27, walked down a ramp onto Italian soil. Behind him, glum and red-eyed, came his Danish wife, Queen Anne-Marie, 25, her mink coat still smelling of the mothballs from which she had hastily removed it. With them were their two infant children, Queen Mother Frederika, the King's 25-year-old sister Irene, and several loyal followers.
Thus last week, after an abortive royal countercoup that may go down as one of the most inept conspiracies in history, the King of the Hellenes fled his country, leaving in control more firmly than ever the military junta that had seized power last April in a lightning coup. Even if the King or one of his family should be enticed back to Greece by the junta, which seems to feel that it needs the royal family for constitutional window dressing, Greece's 134-year-old monarchy had suffered a setback that deprived it of what little power and prestige it had.
Time to Act. The King had chafed for months under Greece's military rulers, led by Colonel George Papadopoulos. He had originally gone along with the coup in hopes that he could exercise a moderating influence on the zealous colonels. But his advice was largely ignored as the junta enacted scores of restrictive laws, banned mini skirts and beatniks' beards, clamped an iron censorship on the press, and sent hundreds of Greeks to prison on such charges as "speaking ill of the authorities" and playing the music of out lawed leftist composers. Constantine waited, hoping for the proper moment to spring a countercoup that would oust the junta and re-establish parliamentary rule in Greece.
For the young King, that moment seemed to have arrived last week. As he saw it, the junta had lost face in Greece by bowing to Turkish demands to pull out 8,000 Greek troops from Cyprus — though its willingness to compromise had undoubtedly prevented a war and an irreparable rupture in NATO.
From his self-imposed exile in Paris, for mer Premier Constantine Karamanlis had heated up the political climate by calling on the junta to step down. Politicians on both the right and left sent the King secret assurances of their support, should he make a move. His advisers, mostly retired generals, assured him that the military would obey his commands. Furthermore, Constantine sensed a growing threat to what was left of his royal power. He may also have feared that the new constitution that was being prepared under junta guidance would strip the crown of the power of appointing and dismissing Premiers, the King's most potent prerogative.