The top QC, his vanished sister and the mystery of Mossad's first British hitwoman

To her neighbours in the nearby Rue Verdun, Penelope was just another eccentric foreigner living her life as best she could in the heart of war-torn west Beirut.



The attractive 30-year-old Englishwoman passed her days seemingly doing nothing more than looking after stray cats and sketching from her window.

Then came January 22, 1979. At 3.35pm the street was rocked by a huge explosion as a 100lb car bomb was detonated. Nine people lost their lives in the blast but it was the death of Ali Hassan Salameh, ripped apart in the back of his Chevrolet station wagon, that would send shockwaves around the world.

Dubbed the Red Prince, he had been the chief planner for the terrorist organisation Black September and was behind the raid at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games in which 11 Israeli athletes were killed.



Erika Chambers (left): Named as a Mossad assassin. One of the alleged Dubai team who posed as 'Gail Folliard' (right)



Ever since, assassination squads from Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, had been set loose on the world hell-bent on revenge. And on that January day, their hunt for Salameh finally came to an end.

Of course, amid all the chaos and the confusion, nobody would have noticed Penelope slipping quietly out of her flat.

She had first taken the trouble to fill the cats' dishes with food and had told a neighbour that the commotion had upset her so much she intended to rest in a hotel nearby.

But in fact she would never return and, to this day, her whereabouts remain a mystery.



All the hostages were killed in a botched rescue



What has, however, become apparent is that far from being an innocent Englishwoman abroad, Penelope was a Mossad spy trained to use her feminine wiles to inveigle her way into the life of one of the world's most feared terrorists - and then help kill him.

Indeed, the evidence strongly suggests that it was she, a modern-day Mata Hari, who activated the detonator that blew up Salamah and his bodyguards.

Hers is an extraordinary story and this week it gained a grim new fascination. The murder in Dubai of Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh by an 11-strong team of assassins has parallels to the murder of Salameh.

Not only is Mossad widely believed to be behind al-Mabhouh's execution but, as with the killing of Salameh, a woman played a central role on the hit squad.

While doubts remain about the actual identities of the Dubai assassins, the years have provided some intriguing clues as to who 'Penelope' really was.

Evidence that has emerged over the years suggests that she was in fact a British woman by the name of Erika Maria Chambers, and she was born and brought up in London as part of a wealthy Anglo-Jewish family.



The first female assassin: The woman pretending to be Irish citizen Gail Folliard smiles as she passes under a CCTV camera during surveillance of the hotel

Living in Notting Hill, her early life, including stints of babysitting for the family of near-neighbour Labour MP Tony Benn, never hinted at the drama to come.



But having travelled to Israel to further her studies at a Hebrew university she was targeted by Mossad and persuaded to become an agent after learning more about the Holocaust, and how many of her relatives had died in it.

Having spent years as a 'sleeper' in Germany, she was activated and sent to Beirut for her one and only mission. After that, she was smuggled into Israel, where it is believed she has been in hiding ever since.

Such was her fear of PLO reprisals her only contact with her parents, both now dead, was the occasional Christmas card bearing an Israeli postage stamp.

But there is one further, extraordinary, twist to the story. Erika Maria Chambers, 'Mossad assassin', has a brother. His name is Nicholas Chambers - and he is a QC and leading civil court judge who is a pillar of the British judicial establishment.



Operation 'Wrath of God' was set up to take revenge

With six days of the 1972 Olympics left to run, at 4.30am on September 5, five Palestinian gunmen, dressed in tracksuits and carrying sports bags scaled the 6ft 6in fence surrounding the Olympic Village.

Armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles and grenades they headed for the building housing the Israeli team.

Within an hour nine hostages had been taken and two athletes were dead. A list of demands was issued and, after 21 hours of negotiations, the German authorities agreed to fly the gunmen and their captives to a nearby airfield.

There, live on television, a botched rescue attempt was staged. It resulted in the death of all the hostages, five of the Palestinians and a policeman.

Determined to wreak their revenge for the Munich massacre, Mossad almost immediately embarked upon a clinically executed programme of assassinations.



Known as 'Operation Wrath of God', its targets were Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organisation and the Black September guerillas believed to be behind Munich.

Within 41 days of the athletes' kidnap, Mossad chalked up its first kill. Their target was Wael Zwaiter, the suspected leader of Black September, who was shot in Rome by a hit squad as he returned to his flat one evening.

The day after his death, Israeli radio proudly reported the 'liquidation' of the first of those involved in the planning of the Munich massacre.



A woman posing as Gail Folliard stakes out the hallway

Next, in December, was the execution of Mahmoud Hamshiri, the PLO's top man in France. The hit was carried out in Paris and involved a table in Hamshiri's flat being switched with one built by Mossad that was packed with plastic explosives.



A telephone call lured him to the table and the bomb was detonated.

As the months passed, the missions got increasingly daring. A raid into the heart of Beirut involving special forces dressed as women claimed the lives of three high-ranking targets, while in Cyprus a woman agent lured a man to his death on an exploding mattress.

But then, in the small Norwegian town of Lillehammer things started to go wrong. Targetting Ali Hassan Salameh, second in the hit list only to Arafat himself, a case of mistaken identity led to the death of an innocent Moroccan waiter.

Arrests swiftly followed with the result that that five-strong team of assassins were jailed for murder. Israel was directly linked to the killing and others around Europe, forcing the cancellation of Operation Wrath of God.

But Mossad wasn't about to forget the unfinished business with Salameh.



She scored a direct hit as the car passed

Five times they would try to kill him, but every time the poster-boy of Arab terrorism escaped.

By 1979 he was chief of security of Al Fatah, the guerilla arm of the PLO and was directly responsible for Arafat's safety. Combined with his fondness for silk shirts and elegant Western suits, it earned him the nickname of the ' playboy cop' - a reputation enhanced by the fact that his second wife was Lebanon's 1972 Miss Universe.

But behind all this, Salameh was a deadly serious player and was widely regarded as Arafat's anointed heir. For this reason - and for his involvement in planning the Munich Massacre - the Israelis were determined to continue with their policy of international assassination.

With this in mind, they put together a plan to recruit an international team to facilitate his liquidation. And it was here that their English recruit - 'Penelope' - would come into play.

Following Salameh's murder, a British passport was discovered in Penelope's apartment in the Rue Verdun. It was in the name of Erika Maria Chambers and gave her date of birth as February 10, 1948.

From this document alone it is, of course, impossible to be sure that this was her true identity. Today, following the 'hit' in Dubai, it has emerged that the killers were almost certainly travelling on false British passports, using details taken from the identities of individuals born in this country but now living in Israel.

The same could, of course, be true in the case of Erika Chambers. But the evidence suggests otherwise.

Her birth certificate reveals that her parents were Marcus and Lona, who had married in London during the war.

The five-star Al-Bustan Rotana Hotel in Dubai where the murder took place

Marcus, a winner of the Le Mans 24 hour race and successful motor sport manager, came from a well-to-do English background (his father was an admiral).



His wife Lona, whose maiden name was Gross, came from a Jewish family from Czechoslovakia and had fled to Britain to escape the Nazis.

Erika and her older brother Nicholas, who was three years older, were brought up in comfortable surroundings in Holland Park, West London, and both were privately educated.

But their parents separated as they were growing up, with Erika living with her mother. She would go on to study geography at Southampton, where tutors remember her as dedicated to her work but at the same time something of a daredevil, owning a Mini Cooper that she would drive around the city at high speed.

After university she travelled briefly to Australia before moving to Israel to study. She arrived at much the same time as the Munich massacre and soon after, according to intelligence sources in Israel and Germany, she was targeted by Mossad as they 'talent-spotted' for an agent to help them kill Salameh.

Erika was perfect. Thanks to her mother she spoke German fluently (a talent cleverly exploited by Mossad's masterplan) and her allegiance to the Israeli cause was cemented after Mossad supplied her with harrowing details of how some of her maternal relatives had died in Nazi gas chambers.

'She was like a good, ordinary English girl,' explains Wilhelm Dietl, a German expert on Mossad who has written a book on the assassination of Salameh, and has had access to intelligence file on the hit. 'As far as Mossad was concerned she was clean and, crucially, didn't look Jewish.'

Several years of intensive training followed, after which she moved to Germany in 1975. She lived there for three years. The purpose was two-fold. First, it distanced her from her time in Israel. Second, following the assassination, it would suggest that the German security services were behind the killing - not Mossad.

At the end of 1978, having been given a visa for Lebanon by the Lebanese Embassy in Bonn, Erika travelled to Beirut. Using the name Penelope, she rented a flat overlooking the Rue Verdun, close to where Salameh lived, posing as an eccentric painter and PLO supporter.

After several months she penetrated the welfare organisation of the Palestinians and from there on to reach Salameh was not a problem,' one of the Mossad agents involved in planning the hit has since revealed. 'So she went to the same swimming pool as him and later on they got friendly.'



Whether or not she slept with him is unclear, but what we do know, according to sources, is that having established Salameh's daily routine another Mossad agent flew into Beirut two weeks before the hit.

Also using a British passport, he used the name Peter Scriver (both the name and the passport have been shown to be fake) and after checking into a hotel rented a Volkswagen from the Lenacar agency.

Some time on January 17, the two met up, after which Scriver drove the VW to a secret garage where it was equipped with a 100lb payload of explosives. Shortly afterwards, his work done, the mysterious Scriver left the country, with a third agent parking the VW in the Rue Verdun 100 yards from Salameh's apartment, and in view of Penelope's flat, on January 22 at 2.30pm.

An hour later, Salameh left his home in his Chevrolet, in the company of four bodyguards. As they passed the VW the bomb was detonated, mortally wounding the occupants of the station wagon as well as killing four passers-by - including a German nun and an English student. A further 18 bystanders were injured.

Although some reports suggest the bomb was set off by a timing device, the Mossad agent involved in the hit claims that it was detonated by Erika.

'Her role was only to press the button at the right time when his car was passing the Volkswagen,' he said. 'Co-ordinating it was very difficult and she was trained to do it. But she managed so well that when he passed she pressed the button and got a direct hit.'

Even as the smoke settled, there was little doubt as to what had happened. Israel - and Wrath of God - had finally got their man.

The Palestinians were furious. When Arafat learned of Salameh's death he said: 'We have lost a lion.' And he ordered those responsible to be hunted down.

But by then it was already too late. Like the hit, the Mossad agents' escape had been meticulously planned. By the time the PLO was beginning to understand the role played by 'Penelope' she was in Israel, having driven to the Christian port of Jounieh before being spirited out of Lebanon on an Israeli gunboat.

In her flat she had left a British passport - sowing the seeds of a mystery that would last to this day.

At the time it was widely assumed that the Erika Chambers's identity must have been a Mossad creation. After all, not only was it a tried and tested espionage technique but checks on her accomplice, Scriver, showed that he did not exist. Could the same be said of Erika Chambers? It would seem not.

Respected author Aaron J. Klein says the passport was genuine and that Erika had been able to use her own identity, as this was a one-off hit.

'Erika Chambers was a nice British lady who even used her own passport,' explains Klein, whose book Striking Back details the Israeli response to Munich. 'She was an ad hoc operative recruited for a specific mission. She was used and no longer needed after the operation. A common procedure.'

Wilhelm Dietl, the German Mossad expert, has further confirmed her identity. He travelled to Britain in the early 1990s and spoke with Erika's father.

'They didn't have a great relationship, but he said there was the odd Christmas card with an Israeli postmark on it,' he says. 'What was clear, however, was that she did remain in touch with her brother.'

He is Oxford-educated Nicholas Mordaunt Chambers, a QC since 1985 and civil court judge. The Mail contacted him on two occasions to discuss the alleged involvement of his sister in the killing of Salameh.

Asked if the Erika Maria Chambers named as a Mossad agent was in fact his sister, Mr Chambers replied: 'You are pursuing from your own point of view a very proper line of inquiry but you will understand that it's not something I can help you with.'

The conversation continued thus: Reporter: 'You appear to be her brother and I am intrigued to know if that is accurate and what indeed has happened to your sister.'

Mr Chambers: 'The answer is you probably <cite>are </cite>intrigued' (laughs).

Reporter: 'I am writing an article about her. I hope if the Israeli intelligence services had assumed someone's identity, your sister's, you might be able to guide me on that.'

Mr Chambers: 'It's a very fair line, but, there one is - well - it's probably really best I don't say anything.'

Contacted a second time he would only say that he hoped that 'time has moved on'.

An intriguing response, indeed. But, then, in the world inhabited by 'Penelope', a world of international espionage, of Mossad-trained death squads, and of life-long glances over one's shoulder, what else should we expect?



