CONVIVIAL, and not averse to a drink, Nancy Wake could often be found cheering up a cocktail bar. In the late 1940s, and again towards the end of her life, it might have been the American Bar of the Stafford Hotel, just across the road from The Economist’s offices in London. In 1940, when she was living as a newlywed in Vichy France, it could have been another American Bar, this one in the Hôtel du Louvre et de la Paix in Marseilles. It was a chance encounter here with an English officer, interned by the French authorities but that day on parole, which led to her membership of the resistance, and then to her role as an agent of the British Special Operations Executive in occupied France. Of the 39 SOE women infiltrated into France, 11 of whom would die in concentration camps, she was perhaps the most redoubtable.南希•维克性格开朗，能喝善饮，鸡尾酒吧经常可以看到她惬意的身影。
上世纪40年代末和生命最后的时光里她常光顾的可能是斯塔福德旅馆里的美国酒吧，这家酒吧就和伦敦《经济学人》办公楼隔路相望。
而1940年时，新婚燕尔的维克居住在维希法国，那时候她可能是巴黎卢浮旅馆和马赛和平旅馆内另一家美国酒吧的常客。
在这家酒吧，机缘巧合，她和一位被法国当局拘留恰巧在当天假释的英国军官相遇。
正是这段偶遇让她加入了反法西斯抵抗组织，后来成为法国占领区内英国特种作战执行队的一名间谍。
所有39名渗透到法国境内的间谍中，11名险些死在集中营里。
维克恐怕是39名间谍中最厉害的角色了。
From her earliest days, Miss Wake combined opposing qualities. She was disciplined, but at the same time a free spirit. In Sydney, to which her large family had moved after leaving her birthplace in New Zealand, she twice ran away from home. As soon as she could, she made her way to London, then to Paris to work as a freelance journalist. There it was her cheerful independence as much as her good looks that caught the eye of the rich French industrialist, Henri Fiocca, who would take her to Marseilles as his wife.打从很小起，维克性格中就充满了对立。
她一方面严于律己，另一方面却叛逆不羁。
一大家人从维克出生地新西兰搬至悉尼后，她曾两度离家出走。
条件一允许她就去了伦敦，然后到巴黎当起了自由记者。
在巴黎，凭着快乐的天性、独立的精神和美丽的容貌她吸引了腰缠万贯的法国企业家亨利•菲奥卡，随后，两人在马赛市结了婚。
She enjoyed her new life of luxury while it lasted, but she was no flibbertigibbet. Soon after meeting the interned British officer, she was helping to get similar Allied airmen, refugees and escaped prisoners-of-war out of occupied France and into Britain. She took a flat, ostensibly for a lover, in fact for the resistance, sheltered men on the run and became a crucial part of the southern escape line to Spain, travelling all over southern France from Nice to Nîmes to Perpignan, with clothing, money and false documents.虽然尽情享受着豪华奢侈的新生活，但她绝不是那种只贪图享受的轻浮女人。
和那位英国军官认识后不久，她就开始为盟军空军、避难人员和从法国被占区逃往英国的战俘提供协助。
她租下一幢公寓，以养情人作掩护，供抵抗组织活动所需，为逃难人员提供庇护；她带着衣物、钱和假造的公文，从尼斯到尼姆再到佩里皮昂在法国南部来回奔走，成为法国南部向西班牙逃亡路线的一个关键人物。
Inevitably, she was arrested. Beaten up and questioned for four days, she revealed nothing. It was this steadiness and loyalty to her comrades that most appealed to the British officers who later agreed to train her to become an SOE agent.不可避免地，她被捕了。
尽管在狱中遭到毒打盘问，她咬紧牙关，没透露任何。
正是由于对战友的可靠和忠诚，那些英国军官后来才一致同意训练她为英国特种作战执行队的间谍。
Other qualities were evident by then. Her femininity was never in doubt. It helped her escape capture, not just because she could on occasion flirt her way out of trouble, but also because her Gestapo pursuers assumed any woman as skilful in evading them must be a butch matron (though because of her ability to scuttle off the Ger mans called her “the White Mouse”). When she was with the Maquis, silk stockings and Elizabeth Arden face cream were often dropped for her by parachute, along with Sten guns, radios and grenades. Yet she conformed to no stereotype, swearing in the vernacular in the coarsest of terms, living for months in the woods and fighting, in the words of a confrère, not like a man but “like five men”.维克性格的其他特点在那时也已展现。
她的女性气质是毫无疑问的，靠着这种气质她一次次逃脱，一方面她可以偶尔和看守调调情从而逃脱，另一方面，一直追捕她的纳粹警察们认为，能够轻松逃脱他们手心的女人一定是那种五大三粗的老女人（不过她仍然因为脱身本领过人而被纳粹称为“白老鼠”）。
在法国抗德游击队工作那会，盟军空投斯特恩式轻机枪、收音机和手榴弹时，经常会顺便带些长筒丝袜、伊利莎白雅顿面霜给她。
但她不是只有女性的一面——她还会用最脏的方言骂人，可以在林中作战中撑过数月，用战友的话来说，她不像一个男人，而是“像五个男人”。
Her fearlessness seemed to come from a total lack of self-doubt. The certainty with which she held her beliefs—she hated the Nazis, having seen them whipping Jews in Vienna before the war, loved France and was intensely loyal to Britain—freed her of any sense of guilt. This in turn enabled her to act as though she were utterly innocent, even when claiming to be the cousin of an imprisoned Scottish captain, or chatting to a Gestapo officer with 200lb of illegal pork in her suitcase.她的无所畏惧似乎来自于她对自己一切的毫不怀疑。
对自己信仰的坚守让她问心无愧——她痛恨纳粹，战前曾亲眼目睹纳粹在维也纳迫害犹太人，她热爱法国，对英国忠贞不渝。
这也进而让她在行动中表现得毫不心虚，甚至可以底气十足地称自己是被捕的苏格兰海军上校的表妹，可以非法在手提箱里藏着200磅猪肉和纳粹警官气定神闲地聊天。