saboteur and special agent, died on August 7th, aged 98

　　南希?威克，二战间功勋卓越的英国间谍特工，8月7日去世，享年98岁。

　　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 H?tel 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.

　　热衷于聚会派对，从不拒绝美酒的南希?威克经常出现在鸡尾酒会。到她生命的最后一段时光也是如此，可能她就出现在伦敦《经济学家》杂志社办公大楼对面的斯塔福耶酒店的美国酒馆。上世纪40年代时亦是如此，1940年她刚刚结婚，嫁到维希政权下的法国，那时她经常出现在另一家美国酒馆，在巴黎卢浮旅馆里或者在马赛和平旅馆里。在那里，她很偶然地碰到一位被法国当局保释的在囚英国军官。 这位军官后来带领她加入了抵抗德国纳粹的运动中，也使她成为了英国特别行动处驻占领的法国的一位特工。而在特别行动处39位渗入法国的女特工中，11名没有在德国纳粹集中营中丧生，而她也许是其中最令人敬畏的那个。

　　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.

　　早在还是个女孩的时候，威克身上就有了相反的特质。她遵守纪律，同时却又热爱自由。她随大家庭从家乡新西兰搬到悉尼后，就离家出走过两次。她一长到足够负担自己的生活的年纪，就自己去了伦敦生活，然后又到巴黎做了自由记者。她那值得庆贺的独立以及她夺人眼球的美貌，捕获了一位法国企业家亨利?费奥卡的心。随后他们结了婚，来到了马赛。

　　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 N?mes to Perpignan, with clothing, money and false documents.

　　她很享受奢华的新生活，但她并不是那种只知享乐的肤浅的人。在她遇到那名被拘禁的英国军官后不久，她就帮着将与他情况相似的盟军飞行员、难民和在逃战俘逃从被占领的法国转移到英国。她买了栋公寓，表面上看是为了会情人用的，但实际上是为了庇护抵抗军。她带着衣物、钱和假造的公文，从尼斯到尼姆再到配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部分。

　　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，她被逮捕了。敌人鞭打拷问了她四天，她却什么都没有泄露。正是这种坚持稳定和对同志的忠诚打动了那位英国军官，成为他后来同意将她训练为一名特别行动处特工的最重要原因。

　　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 Germans 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”.

　　那时她的其它优秀品质也已经非常明显。她的女性魅力是毋庸置疑的。这帮助她成功逃离拘捕，并不只是因为他能偶尔靠美人计脱险，还因为她的那些盖世太保追求者们认为任何擅长回避他们追求的人必定是个男人婆 （不过因为她非常善于逃跑，德国纳粹称她为“白鼠”）。 在法国抗德游击队工作那会儿，组织经常空降丝袜、伊莉莎白?雅顿的面霜，以及斯特恩式轻机关枪、收音机和手榴弹给她。然而，她绝不是一般的女人。她可以用最脏的法国方言骂人，她也可以在茂林作战数月。用一位同事的话说，她根本不像一个男人，她“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.

　　她的英勇无畏似乎因为她从不自我怀疑。她那种斩钉截铁的确定和由此而来的信念——对战前在维也纳鞭笞犹太人的纳粹的痛恨、对法国的热爱以及对英国无比的忠诚——使她从不愧疚。因此，即使她公开撒谎自己是一名囚禁的苏格兰上校的表妹，或者是在包里藏着两百磅非法猪肉与一名盖世太保军官交谈，她也表现地底气十足、气定神闲。

　　It was sheer guts, though, that got her over the Pyrenees in her espradilles when the Germans were at her heels. And back in Britain in 1943 it was her character rather than her skills or physical abilities that got her through her training in grenade throwing, silent killing and parachute jumping. As for violence, she hated it—until she became hardened.

　　然而，完全是巨大的勇气，使得她在德国纳粹紧跟其后的情况下，穿着她那破旧的帆布鞋，穿越了比利牛斯山。而再往前，1943年在英国时，正是因为她的顽强的性格，而不是她的技术或身体素质，使她通过了扔手榴弹、无声杀人和跳伞训练。她痛恨暴力，直到她变得无坚不摧。

　　That began in April 1944, when Captain (as she now was) Wake and another SOE agent were parachuted into the Auvergne in south-central France. Their immediate job was to work with the local Maquis to cause as much disruption as possible before D-day five weeks later. Now the fighting began, and Captain Wake showed herself more than willing to take part, readily joining raiding parties, blowing up local Gestapo headquarters and ambushing German patrols.

　　那是1944年4月，威克成为了上尉（到现在一直是），她和另外一位英国特别行动处特工空降在法国中南部的奥弗涅。他们当时的任务是与当地的抗德游击队员一起，尽可能多地制造混乱，为五周后的诺曼底登陆做准备。现在斗争开始了，威克上尉显然不只是要去参与其中，她自愿加入了突击队，端掉了盖世太保的总指挥部，并突袭了德国巡逻兵。

　　She did not enjoy killing a German sentry with her bare hands, but she was unsentimental. Likewise, she saw the necessity of killing a German woman captured by some of her Maquis colleagues who admitted to being a spy. Though she had been raped and tortured, Captain Wake ordered her to be shot—or, if the captain’s later suggestion is to be believed, she herself shot her, since the Maquisards’ sense of honour permitted her rape but not her killing.

　　她不喜欢用徒手杀掉一名德国哨兵的感觉，但她并非冷血无情。同样地，在与她共事的马基队员抓到一名承认自己是名间谍的德国妇女时，她知道必须杀了她。尽管这女人已经被强暴过、折磨过，威克上尉还是命令杀掉她。甚至，人们都不敢相信她后来这个提议：由她亲手干掉她——因为法国抵抗成员的荣誉感使他们只允许自己强暴她，而不允许自己杀掉她。

　　In spite of such horrors, and in spite of such feats as bicycling over 500km in under 72 hours to find a radio operator, Captain Wake was having the time of her life. She was still only 26, a woman among 7,000 (mostly) admiring men, carrying out daily acts of derring-do and revelling in a job she had plainly been born for. Although she lived with the constant possibility of capture, it held no fear for her, and she did not yet know that her husband, rather than betray her, had been arrested by the Gestapo, tortured and killed. Decorations galore—from Britain, France, America and Australia—awaited her, but life would never be as good again.

　　尽管经历着类似的恐怖事件，尽管曾经有过许多惊人壮举，比如为寻找一个收音机操作员72小时内骑车500公里，威克上尉依然享受着女人生命的黄金时光。她毕业是个26岁的年轻女性，军营中的7000男人大多都是她的倾慕者。在这群男人中，每天英勇地执行任务，完全陶醉于这一她天生注定要从事的工作。尽管随时都有可能被捕，她却从不害怕。那时她还不知道，她的丈夫并不是背叛了她，而是被盖世太保抓了起来，折磨致死。战争结束后，各种荣誉从英国、法国、美国和澳大利亚向她涌来，但她生命最美好的时光已一去不返。