Sign of the Nick

Driving up Macao's Rua Padre Antonio one cool, drizzly morning a few weeks ago, two youths found their way deliberately blocked by a pedicab. At that moment, three men forced themselves into the car and, at pistol point, made the youths drive on to an empty bicycle shop on a lonely street. Here the kidnapers hauled them out, stuck oranges into their mouths, blindfolded, trussed and loaded them into gunny sacks, dumped them into a couple of rickshas. Singing gay Cantonese songs to drown out any possible outcry, the men pulled the rickshas to an empty house in a desolate part of Macao,where they opened up the sacks and retrussed the two youths. They wound cloth tape around their heads mummy fashion, leaving space only for nostrils and mouths. They replaced the oranges with unshelled walnuts, stuffed their ears with cotton, and bound their limbs with ropes and electric wires which they nailed to the floor.

The kidnapers had chosen their victims carefully. The two youths were members of wealthy and prominent families in Macao: Fu Iam-kin, 14, was the son of multimillionaire Gambling Magnate Fu Tak-iam, and Antonio de Assis Fong, 22, was the son of the manager of Macao's Central Hotel. The kidnapers sent word to the parents demanding ransom of 700,000 Hong Kong dollars ($122,850 U.S.). But they reckoned not on Gambler Fu Tak-iam. He announced that he would not pay ransom for his son because it would set a bad precedent: he has four wives and 16 other children.

As the days went by, the two youths were guarded day & night by men who threatened them with daggers when they moved. They got a single daily meal of boiled rice water or sweetened oatmeal. They were forced to write letters home begging their parents to pay, as their sufferings were increasing by the minute. The families of the two youths put advertisements in the newspapers, showing intention to pay. But Fu Tak-iam kept stalling. He had been kidnaped himself seven years before, and knew that kidnapers aren't serious until they send a slice of the victim's ear. When his own ears had been sliced, his family paid.

Last week, 14 days after the kidnaping, a phone tip led police to the deserted house, where they found young Fu Iam and Tony Fong half starved and temporarily paralyzed by their bindings. The gang had decamped an hour before, learning of their betrayal just as they had finished slicing young Fu Iam's ears.

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