Word: gangly
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...most prominent victims of Teng's finesses have been the ultraradical leaders known as the Gang of Four, headed by Mao's widow Chiang Ch'ing. But now there are signs that Teng's purge is being extended to next echelon radicals. For the past two weeks, Peking's walls have been plastered with posters denouncing the so-called Mini-Gang of Four, consisting of Peking's mayor Wu Teh; General Ch'en Hsi-lien, the regional commander of the capital military district; Saifudin, former chief of the Sinkiang-Uigher Autonomous Region...
Rather than lose their posts-or worse -the mini-gang's three living members may only be stripped of effective power. One reason for this apparent leniency is that the crafty Teng may actually be aiming at targets much higher than Mayor Wu and the others. Some wall posters, believed to have been written by Teng's backers, complain, for example, about striking "blows only at low levels and not on top." That could only be an implicit criticism of Chairman Hua and his policies in the post...
...camping tent. He spent his lonely hours making the few mental notes that he could-two dogs barking, a child crying upstairs, some cracks in a plaster wall he could see. Heavy chains were padlocked around his neck, and the temperature was kept frigid. At mealtime one of the gang would alert the prisoner of his approach by coughing; Empain would then have to draw a hood over his head and cough to indicate that he was wearing it. His food came from tin cans, which the kidnapers tossed into the backyard when he was finished...
When the baron refused to sign a ransom note, the kidnapers lopped off a piece of the little finger of his left hand-using an ordinary kitchen knife without benefit of anesthetic-and sent it to his family as grisly proof of identity. Gang members provided some antiseptic and a bandage to stop the bleeding. They also warned Empain that unless he cooperated with them they would cut off another finger for each day the ransom went unpaid...
Though money was obviously the gang's motive, Caillol and his accomplices seemed to elude easy classification. Caillol, 36, the suspected ringleader, is the son of a prosperous furniture manufacturer and ran a branch of his father's business in Montpellier. Daniel Duchateau, 39, who died in the Shootout, was even more enigmatic. After serving a six-year term for armed robbery from 1966 to '72, he wrote a book about why he had become a criminal. A five-year army stint convinced him, wrote Duchateau, that money brings liberty. "It's nothing really, just little...