The Yellow Typhoon

Twin Nordstrom sisters cleave the world between them like a cracked prism: one refracts into decadent Shanghai shadows as the perfumed temptress the Yellow Typhoon; the other crystallises into a lacquered shield of star-spangled espionage. Berta trades matrimony for opium-scented silks, leaving her naval-engineer spouse adrift in Europe, then weaponises her body in the Orient as a courtesan-cum-spy, every caress a promissory note for geopolitical larceny. Hilda, her mirror image, enlists in Washington’s clandestine sisterhood, sworn to defend the very blueprint that could cloak U.S. submarines in technological invisibility. When Berta and her saboteur consort Karl Lysgaard slit the throat of the absent-minded inventor, the macguffin blueprints escape via briefcase into the custody of granite-jawed Lieut. Commander John Mathison, whose battleship steams toward Potomac secrecy. Aboard the same vessel, the twins—one in virtue’s white trench, the other in villainous chiffon—play a lethal shell game of identity, lust and leverage until steel-capped retribution arrives in a volley of naval gunfire and handcuffs.