14 The Count of the Hill
My first orders as a freshly minted* officer of the government were to head for the Comfort Inn in Warrenton, Virginia, a sad, dilapidated (破旧的) motel whose primary client was the “State Department,” by which I mean the CIA. It was the worst motel in a town of bad motels, which was probably why the CIA chose it. The fewer other guests, the lower the chances that anybody would notice that this particular Comfort Inn served as a makeshift dormitory for the Warrenton Training Center—or, as folks who work there call it, the Hill.
freshly minted 来源于铸币厂：Mint作为动词，意思是“铸造（硬币）”。Freshly minted字面意思就是“刚刚铸造出来的”，常用于描述任何崭新、刚刚出现或刚刚完成创造的人或事物。核心含义是 “崭新的，新造的，刚出炉的”，通常带有一种“全新、未经使用、充满潜力”的积极意味。
When I checked in, the desk clerk warned me not to use the stairs, which were blocked off by police tape. I was given a room on the second floor of the main building, with a view of the inn’s auxiliary buildings (附属/配套建筑) and parking lot. The room was barely lit, there was mold in the bathroom, the carpets were filthy with cigarette burns under the No Smoking sign, and the flimsy (very thin, easily broken) mattress was stained dark purple with what I hoped was booze (酒). Nevertheless, I liked it—I was still at the age when I could find this seediness* romantic—and I spent my first night lying awake in bed, watching the bugs swarm the single domed overhead light fixture (房屋内的固定装置) and counting down the hours to the free continental breakfast* I’d been promised.
Seediness n. the quality of looking dirty or in bad condition and likely to be involved in dishonest or illegal activities.
continental breakfast，continental 指的是欧洲大陆。这种早餐风格起源于19世纪的英国，当时英国人用“大陆早餐”来指代法国、西班牙等欧洲大陆国家的简单早餐习惯，以区别于他们自己更丰盛的早餐。这是一种简约、清淡的早餐形式，其核心特点是以冷食、烘焙食品和饮料为主，通常不包含热菜。
The next morning, I discovered that on the continent of Warrenton, breakfast meant individual-size boxes of Froot Loops (如图) and sour milk (变质的牛奶). Welcome to the government.
The Comfort Inn was to be my home for the next six months. My fellow Innmates* and I, as we called ourselves, were discouraged from telling our loved ones where we were staying and what we were doing. I leaned hard into (主动接受) those protocols, rarely heading back to Maryland or even talking to Lindsay on the phone. Anyway, we weren’t allowed to take our phones to school, since class was classified, and we had classes all the time. Warrenton kept most of us too busy to be lonely.
Innmate ：这个词本应是inmate，指狱友或者是精神病院中的病友。他们此时住在inn，所以叫Innmate。完美的谐音双关。
If the Farm, down by Camp Peary, is the CIA’s most famous training institution, chiefly because it’s the only one that the agency’s PR (公关) staff is allowed to talk to Hollywood about, the Hill is without a doubt the most mysterious. Connected via microwave and fiber optics (光纤) to the satellite relay facility at Brandy Station—part of the Warrenton Training Center’s constellation of sister sites—the Hill serves as the heart of the CIA’s field communications network, carefully located just out of nuke range (核打击范围) from DC.1 The salty (粗鲁的爱闹事的) old techs who worked there liked to say that the CIA could survive losing its headquarters to a catastrophic attack, but it would die if it ever lost Warrenton, and now that the top of the Hill holds two enormous top secret data centers—one of which I later helped to construct—I’m inclined to agree.
1 这座通过微波与光纤连接Brandy Station卫星中继设施的基地——隶属于Warrenton训练中心卫星群——实为中情局外勤通讯网络的心脏，其选址精心测算在华盛顿的核打击范围之外。
The Hill earned its name because of its location, which is atop, yes, a massive steepness. When I arrived, there was just one road that led in, past a purposely under-marked (标志稀少的) perimeter fence (围栏), and then up a grade so severe that whenever the temperature dropped and the road iced over, vehicles would lose traction and slide backward downhill.
Just beyond the guarded checkpoint lies the State Department’s decaying diplomatic communications training facility, whose prominent location was meant to reinforce its role as cover: making the Hill appear as if it’s merely a place where the American foreign service trains technologists. Beyond it, amid the back territory, were the various low, unlabeled buildings I studied in, and even farther on was the shooting range that the IC’s trigger pullers used for special training. Shots would ring out, in a style of firing I wasn’t familiar with: pop-pop, pop; pop-pop, pop. A double-tap meant to incapacitate (使无法行动), followed by an aimed shot meant to execute.
I was there as a member of class 6-06 of the BTTP, the Basic Telecommunications Training Program, whose intentionally beige (没特点的) name disguises one of the most classified and unusual curricula in existence. The purpose of the program is to train TISOs (Technical Information Security Officers)—the CIA’s cadre (干部队伍) of elite “communicators,” or, less formally, “commo guys.” A TISO is trained to be a jack-of-all-trades*, a one-person replacement for previous generations’ specialized roles of code clerk, radioman, electrician, mechanic, physical and digital security adviser, and computer technician. The main job of this undercover officer is to manage the technical infrastructure for CIA operations, most commonly overseas at stations hidden inside American missions, consulates, and embassies*—hence the State Department connection. The idea is, if you’re in an American embassy, which is to say if you’re far from home and surrounded by untrustworthy foreigners—whether hostiles or allies, they’re still untrustworthy foreigners to the CIA—you’re going to have to handle all of your technical needs internally. If you ask a local repairman to fix your secret spy base, he’ll definitely do it, even for cheap, but he’s also going to install hard-to-find bugs on behalf of a foreign power.
jack-of-all-trades：someone who can do many different jobs 多面手，万事通，但是杂而不精，所以有句俗语：jack-of-all-trades, master of none
consulates and embassies 领事馆和大使馆：大使馆是处理国家间政治大事的“总部”，而领事馆是服务公民和企业的“地方分公司”。
embassy大使馆，是一国在驻在国设立的最高级别外交代表机构，其首要特征是政治性与全局性。它通常设在首都，由大使领导，核心职能是处理两国间的国家级重大事务，如政策协调、元首互访和政治谈判，是国家主权的核心象征。
consulate领事馆，是大使馆的下属机构，侧重于事务性与服务性工作。通常设在主要城市，一国可设多个，主要负责侨民保护、护照签证、文书公证等民生服务，职能具体且覆盖范围通常限于特定领事区。
As a result, TISOs are responsible for knowing how to fix basically every machine in the building, from individual computers and computer networks to CCTV and HVAC systems*, solar panels, heaters and coolers, emergency generators, satellite hookups, military encryption devices, alarms, locks, and so on. The rule is that if it plugs in or gets plugged into, it’s the TISO’s problem.2
CCTV= Closed-Circuit Television（闭路电视）
HVAC = Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning（供热、通风与空调）
2 规矩是：只要这东西需要插电或是能被插入接口，就归TISO管。
TISOs also have to know how to build some of these systems themselves, just as they have to know how to destroy them—when an embassy is under siege, say, after all the diplomats and most of their fellow CIA officers have been evacuated. The TISOs are always the last guys out. It’s their job to send the final “off the air” (停止联络) message to headquarters after they’ve shredded, burned, wiped, degaussed (消磁), and disintegrated (=destroy) anything that has the CIA’s fingerprints on it, from operational documents in safes to disks with cipher material, to ensure that nothing of value remains for an enemy to capture.
Why this was a job for the CIA and not for the State Department—the entity that actually owns the embassy building—is more than the sheer difference in competence and trust: the real reason is plausible deniability (合理的推诿). The worst-kept secret in modern diplomacy is that the primary function of an embassy nowadays is to serve as a platform for espionage (间谍活动). The old explanations for why a country might try to maintain a notionally sovereign physical presence on another country’s soil faded into obsolescence (过时) with the rise of electronic communications and jet-powered aircraft.3 Today, the most meaningful diplomacy happens directly between ministries and ministers. Sure, embassies do still send the occasional démarche* and help support their citizens abroad, and then there are the consular sections that issue visas and renew passports. But those are often in a completely different building, and anyway, none of those activities can even remotely justify the expense of maintaining all that infrastructure. Instead, what justifies the expense is the ability for a country to use the cover of its foreign service to conduct and legitimize its spying.
plausible deniability "合理推诿"机制：中情局人员以外交身份为掩护，一旦行动暴露，政府可声称其属"未经授权的个人行为"
3 电子通讯与喷气式飞机使"在他国维持主权飞地"的传统解释彻底过时。
a notionally sovereign physical presence on another country’s soil： 在另一国领土上的一种名义上拥有主权的物理存在。——根据《维也纳外交关系公约》，使馆馆舍享有不可侵犯权，即东道国的执法人员未经许可不得进入。这被视为外交特权与豁免的一部分，是一种有限的、功能性的主权延伸，而非真正的领土主权。—— 所以，整句话指的是：一个国家通过在别国首都建立大使馆，获得了一块在法律上享有特殊地位、不受东道国普通法律管辖的飞地。这曾是维护国家尊严和进行复杂外交的必要手段。但是当技术进步，部长们可以随时打加密电话或坐专机直接会面时，那种“必须在自己的一块飞地里才能进行严肃外交”的理由就站不住脚了。
Démarche 法语，指一国政府向另一国政府发出的正式外交交涉或倡议，通常旨在传达立场、寻求信息、提出抗议或推动某项行动。可将其理解为外交官使用的一种“正式文书”或“官方动作”。
TISOs work under diplomatic cover with credentials (资格证书/证明) that hide them among these foreign service officers, usually under the identity of “attachés.”(大使馆馆长的随员) The largest embassies would have maybe five of these people, the larger embassies would have maybe three, but most just have one. They’re called “singletons,” and I remember being told that of all the posts (职位) the CIA offers, these have the highest rates of divorce. To be a singleton is to be the lone technical officer, far from home, in a world where everything is always broken.
My class in Warrenton began with around eight members and lost only one before graduation—which I was told was fairly uncommon. And this motley (混杂的) crew was uncommon, too, though pretty well representative of the kind of malcontents (不满分子) who voluntarily sign up for a career track that all but guarantees they’ll spend the majority of their service undercover in a foreign country. For the first time in my IC career, I wasn’t the youngest in the room. At age twenty-four, I’d say I was around the mean (平均数), though my experience doing systems work at headquarters certainly gave me a boost in terms of familiarity with the agency’s operations. Most of the others were just tech-inclined kids straight out of college, or straight off the street, who’d applied online.
In a nod to* the paramilitary aspirations of the CIA’s foreign field branches, we called each other by nicknames4—quickly assigned based on eccentricities (古怪行为)—more often than by our true names. Taco Bell was a suburb: wide, likable, and blank*. At twenty years old, the only job he’d had prior to the CIA was as the night-shift manager at a branch of the eponymous (同名的) restaurant in Pennsylvania. Rainman was in his late twenties and spent the term bouncing around the autism spectrum between catatonic* detachment and shivering fury. He wore the name we gave him proudly and claimed it was a Native American honorific.5 Flute earned his name because his career in the Marines was far less interesting to us than his degree in panpipes* from a music conservatory (音乐学院). Spo was one of the older guys, at thirty-five or so. He was called what he was called because he’d been an SPO—a Special Police Officer—at the CIA’s headquarters, where he got so bored out of his mind guarding the gate at McLean that he was determined to escape overseas even if it meant cramming (塞) his entire family into a single motel room (a situation that lasted until the management found his kids’ pet snake living in a dresser drawer). Our elder was the Colonel, a midforties former Special Forces commo sergeant who, after numerous tours in the sandbox (暗指中东战区), was trying out for his second act. We called him the Colonel, even though he was just an enlisted guy, not an officer, mostly out of his resemblance to that friendly Kentuckian whose fried chicken we preferred to the regular fare (日常伙食) of the Warrenton cafeteria.
In a nod to “为了向…致敬/致意”或 “考虑到/顺应…”，带有微妙、含蓄的认可或让步的意味。
4 为呼应中情局海外外勤站的准军事化抱负，我们彼此以代号相称。
wide, likable, and blank性情宽厚、讨人喜欢，却没什么鲜明个性。
catatonic，If someone is catatonic, they are stiff and not moving or reacting, as if dead.
5 雨人年近三十，整个学期都在自闭症谱系的两极间摇摆——时而僵直疏离，时而因愤怒而颤抖。他自豪于我们赠予的这个名号，并声称这是印第安式的尊称。
Rain Man是一部1988年上映的美国剧情片，是电影史上的经典之作，对流行文化产生了深远影响。电影讲述了一个精明的汽车商查理·巴比特（汤姆·克鲁斯 Tom Cruis饰）在父亲去世后，发现巨额遗产竟然留给了一个他从未谋面的自闭症哥哥雷蒙德·巴比特（达斯汀·霍夫曼 Dustin Hoffman饰）。雷蒙德生活在精神病院，拥有惊人的记忆力和计算能力，但社交能力严重缺失。查理“绑架”了雷蒙德，试图争取监护权以获得遗产，在一段穿越美国的旅途中，兄弟二人从陌生、对抗到逐渐理解，最终建立了深厚的亲情。
panpipes 排箫。Panpipes = Pan(希腊神话中的牧神潘) + pipes。
这副笛子的诞生源于一段单相思：牧神潘爱上了一位名叫Syrinx绪任克斯的水泽仙女。绪任克斯为了躲避潘的追求，请求河神将她变成了一片芦苇。潘发现后，伤心地将芦苇割下，但由于思念，他把长短不一的芦苇杆捆在一起，做成了世界上第一支排箫，并以仙女的名字“Syrinx”为之命名。因此，排箫在古希腊更常被称为 Syrinx，但后来，因其与潘神的传说紧密相连，乐器逐渐更普遍地被称为 Panpipes（潘的笛子）或 Pan's flute（潘神之笛）。
My nickname—I guess I can’t avoid it—was the Count. Not because of my aristocratic (贵族的) bearing or dandyish (时髦的) fashion sense, but because, like the felt (毛毡) vampire puppet of Sesame Street, I had a tendency to signal my intention to interrupt class by raising my forefinger, as if to say: “One, two, three, ah, ha, ha, three things you forgot!”6
6这个吸血鬼木偶的官方名字是 Count von Count——“Count” 是一个绝妙的双关语。既指吸血鬼的贵族头衔“伯爵”，又指他最喜欢的动作“计数”——冯·计数伯爵。
他的特点是有计数强迫症：热爱数视线内的任何东西（台阶、窗户、蝙蝠等），数完后会发出经典的大笑：“Ah! Ah! Ah!”（啊！啊！啊！）。
These were the folks with whom I’d cycle through some twenty different classes, each in its own specialty, but most having to do with how to make the technology available in any given environment serve the government of the United States, whether in an embassy or on the run (逃亡当中).
