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At first he intended to escape into the forests and mountains around Paphos that he had known as a young shepherd. But then, he recalled later, "I decided I could serve my people better if I went abroad to rally international support against the Greek junta." Through India's General Dewan Prem Chand, commander of the 2,188-man United Nations forces on Cyprus, Makarios arranged for an R.A.F. helicopter to take him out of Paphos to a British base on the island.' Before he left, however, he made a brief broadcast over the Paphos radio station, which had rechristened itself "the Voice of Free Cyprus." The stronger Nicosia-based Cyprus Broadcasting Corp. was chortling: "Makarios is dead! Makarios is dead!" "Zo [I live]," said the archbishop. "Support me. Rise up and fight."
At that point, the fighting was over —temporarily, as it turned out—and the national guard controlled the island.
About 30 people had been killed and 200 wounded in the day-long battle.
Even as Makarios was airlifted to Malta and then to London on an R.A.F. Comet jet, a notoriously ruthless terrorist named Nikos Sampson was already being sworn in as President.
Sampson, 39, who has openly bragged of killing at least a dozen men, earned his living as editor-publisher of the Nicosia newspaper Makhi (Struggle), one of the largest on the island. He was one of about two dozen powerful right-wing "warlords" who maintained small private armies for attacks on Turkish enclaves. But he was politically unsophisticated and suspected of being chosen by the Greek junta to become President because he would be a willing mouthpiece for Athens.
A son of peasants, Nikos Giorgiades adopted Sampson as his surname because he thought it expressed the strength an underground fighter ought to have. A British intelligence officer who has long known him said harshly:
"Sampson is a thug and killer, pure and simple." British authorities believe that he was responsible for 26 killings in his fight against British rule, but he was never convicted of murder.
Sadistic Reputation. One senior British official recalls that after a terrorist killing, Sampson would frequently be "the first reporter on the scene. The reason, of course, was that he himself had committed the murders. He would hide behind a narrow turning in a Nicosia side street, wait for his victim to pass, and then blow the man's head off or shatter his back. He would toss his gun to a small boy, who would disappear into the bowels of the earth. Sampson would then run away and reappear several minutes later clutching his reporter's notebook." Although much of his terrorism was politically motivated, he acquired a reputation for sadistically enjoying the pain he inflicted.
Sampson, in his single public appearance as President before the Turkish invasion, met foreign newsmen in Nicosia to charge Makarios with torturing Cypriots and display some of the archbishop's weapons and "victims."