True or false, the public airing of this dirty washing might have harmed Onassis’s reputation irretrievably had the whole affair not suddenly taken a fantastic twist…. The French investigating judges … demanded to see the contract with Onassis on which Catapodis based his claim. But Catapodis was not in a position to produce the vital document. It had been prepared in minute detail, he said, and signed by Onassis, but later, when he looked at it again, he discovered that the signature must have been written with disappearing ink. It had vanished. He had gone back to Onassis and asked him to sign it again but Onassis had taken the contract from him and promised to send him a new one the next day. Catapodis said that the next day never came. Furthermore, he added, Mohammed Ali Reza had the same experience and also found Onassis’s signature on his own contract fading, but where Catapodis failed, Ali Reza was supposed to have succeeded and received a contract signed with more durable ink. It was more than any judge could reasonably be asked to accept. Catapodis’s suit was dismissed. When asked to comment, Onassis smiled indulgently and said, “What did you think — I go around with disappearing ink in my pen?” — Willi Frischauer, in his book Onassis (borrow free)
