The four gangsters were wearing surgical masks when they grabbed the British businessman outside a Hong Kong nightclub and dragged him out of his taxi.
With shocking brutality, they hacked him repeatedly with meat cleavers. When they fled the scene a few seconds later, 32-year-old Ben Ford was left bleeding on the pavement. Part of his hand had been chopped off and it took 15 hours of surgery to reattach his fingers.
The savage attack last spring had all the trademarks of Hong Kong's feared Triad gangs. They had descended without pity, without warning, without hesitation. And before the attack, they had smeared their meat cleavers with human excrement, a symbol of contempt for their enemies.
Only later did the gangsters realize they had attacked the wrong man. They had grabbed Mr. Ford because he was wearing the same type of rugby T-shirt as a bouncer who had evicted a drunken patron from the nightclub.
The drunken man's girlfriend had called in the Triad members to take vengeance on the bouncer, but they maimed an innocent man by mistake.
At first glance, the brazen fearlessness of the gangsters seemed to show that the secret Triad societies are as lethally powerful as their reputation suggests.
But in reality, the attack on Mr. Ford may have exposed a more surprising truth: the collapse of the traditional Triad structure.
There is mounting evidence that the once-dreaded secret societies are actually becoming a weaker and less influential force in Hong Kong today.
But in their death throes, increasingly disorganized and poorly disciplined, the Triads remain dangerous -- even to innocent bystanders.
Police statistics confirm the decline. Triad-related crime has dropped sharply during the past decade. Of the 38,000 reported crimes in Hong Kong in the first half of 2005, only 2.7 per cent were Triad related, according to the statistics. The same data show a further decline in the past five months.
The percentage has been falling steadily since 1994, when 4.3 per cent of all reported crimes were Triad related.
The Triads, with their centuries-old history, have always flourished in an atmosphere of mystery and fear. A flood of Asian movies and sensational tabloid reports have created a perception that the Triads are above the law, operating with impunity in a vast global network from Hong Kong to Vancouver and Toronto.
In the 1980s and 1990s, the RCMP were deeply worried that the Hong Kong Triads were spreading their tentacles into Canada.
They were notorious for the elaborate rituals of their three-day initiation ceremonies, organized like Chinese operas with incense-burning, poetry recitals, decorated altars, the beheading of chickens and the drawing of blood from the fingers of new members.
But under heavy pressure from powerful anti-Triad police units, the gangs have been forced to abandon their traditional ceremonies.
"We haven't received any information about any ceremonies since 2002," said Sergeant George Shek, a Triad specialist with the Hong Kong Police. "These ceremonies have become much simpler because they want to keep a low profile and avoid the police."
The elaborate system of Triad ranks -- which traditionally began with a "dragon head" at the top and led through many different ranks down to the "red poles" and " blue lanterns" at the bottom -- has been reduced to only three basic ranks.
Of the 50 Triads known to the Hong Kong police, only 14 are believed to be active today. The most powerful are reputedly the Wo Shing Wo and 14K societies.
The Wo Shing Wo is said to be the most violent and the most willing to engage in street-level attacks, although 14K may have the largest membership.
As recently as the 1990s, the Triads were reported to have as many as 160,000 members and supporters in Hong Kong, a relatively large number for a territory of just seven million people. But their membership is much smaller today, and many of their supporters are mere hangers-on who boast of Triad connections to impress others.
"The movies portray them as powerful, but my research shows that this is a myth," said Chu Yiu Kong, a criminologist and Triad expert at the University of Hong Kong.
"They are becoming less important and less organized. They are tightly controlled by the police. There are a lot of police informers among them."
Even the attack on the British businessman was an example of the poor discipline of the younger Triad members, he said. A traditional Triad society would never attack a foreigner, because it would attract unwanted attention and pressure from the police.
An aggressive anti-corruption campaign, combined with higher salaries for police officers, has reduced the corrupt links between the Triads and the Hong Kong police authorities, and that has stripped away the official protection that the gangs had often enjoyed in the past, Prof. Chu said.
The mystique of the secret societies in movies and TV is continuing to attract teenagers into the Triads, but often they have nothing more than a verbal agreement with a "big brother" (an older Triad member).
"A lot of young people claim to be Triad members, and they use this to recruit followers," Prof. Chu said. "But the big brothers must be laughing at how many people claim to be their followers. Any traditional [organized-crime group]would tightly control its membership, but the Triads are becoming less organized."
To fight the allure of the Triads, Sgt. Shek has talked to juvenile offenders, explaining to them that the reality of daily life in the gangs is much less glamorous than they might imagine.
"From our research, we know that 13- to 16-year-olds are easily trapped by the Triads," he said. "The movies glorify the Triads, making them look like heroes who care about brotherhood. So we tell them what it's all about. One of our undercover officers, for example, told us that his job in the Triad was just to deliver black-market cigarettes.
"Even the big brothers have a very dull life. Some even have jobs as street cleaners, and they get their followers to help them with the street cleaning."