Originally Posted by Danger Close:
“RE: Amsterdam
As I followed it, he's a former asset of Carrie's during her time in Baghdad. He was thought to have been killed years before. Carrie spotted a file about a separate asset from Baghdad trying to get in touch with her 5 months previous after seeing the first guy alive and well but being rejected by the CIA. Presumably by Alison after having recruited/coerced the apparently dead asset into whatever she's up to.
Carrie went to Amsterdam looking for him after the hacker found his supposed widow was living there and assumed the former asset was there too.
Alison assuming Carrie was alive sent some heavies to clean up in Amsterdam.”
The guy in Amsterdam (Ahmed Nazari) was either a CIA asset or, perhaps, someone they were watching as a 'person of interest' in Baghdad back when Allison was station chief there. He appears to have been spirited out of the country by the SVR (Russian foreign intelligence service, equivalent to CIA and MI-6) who faked his death for their own reasons (as yet unclear).
The implication is that Allison was instrumental in facilitating this in some way because she is a Russian sleeper/double agent, and the jeopardy is that now Carrie knows Nazari she/the CIA will be able to backtrace through the timeline and documentation and discover evidence of Allison's treason.
The knowledge that Carrie is still alive
and has a copy of the 'hacked files' that contain the first threads that will unravel Allisons double life and send her to prison or even her death (I think treason is still a capital crime under US Federal Law?) is what sends her into a massive panic attack in Saul's hotel bathroom.
The Russian 'heavies' were actually sent to Amsterdam by Ivan, Allison's SVR handler and boss, evidently to retrieve something vital from Nazir's safe and, presumably, to kill Carrie when she showed up and thus prevent her from eventually exposing Allison.
I'm not convinced that the guys who grabbed up Ahmed Nazir while he was walking his dog (and presumably killed the poor cabbie) are Russian, they looked more Middle-Eastern in appearance to me which would suggest someone else has recently become aware of Nazir's non-dead status, perhaps the Iraqi security services who may have discovered this from watching/bugging Carrie's old asset the retired Baghdadi judge - he did imply he was out of favour with the current regime there.
At some point I expect all this to loop back to Quinn and the jihadis (or at least the 'big bad' ISIL commander that Quinn mentioned to Dar Adal) but I'm not sure how yet!