Chapter 62 REAL CLUB DE TENIS

Vyacheslav Babkin was an honored guest at the Real Club de Tenis de San

Sebastian. He was not a player, but his daughter’s boyfriend, Iñaki

Guttierez, a rising star in Spanish tennis, was scheduled to play in the ATP

Challenger Tour Tournament being held the club.

V

Bixintxo Bazurko, a Franco-Spanish real estate developer and a long-standing

member of the club’s committee, was there to welcome Babkin and Maria,

accompanied by Fernando Martínez. The Russians were guests on the rich

Spaniard’s motor yacht anchored in the Bahia de La Concha from where they

would be able to enjoy the firework display that Saturday evening.

The weather was splendid, a clear blue sky with temperatures expected to reach

thirty degrees in the afternoon. Whilst Maria mixed with the players, Bixintxo

invited Babkin and Martínez to lunch in the club’s restaurant where they could

shelter from the blazing sun. Bixintxo was proud of his home town, where in the

19th century the King of Spain had built a summer palace overlooking La Concha,

San Sebastian’s magnificent bay.

At precisely the same moment Bixintxo ordered lunch in the chic tennis club, on

the other side of Spain, almost one thousand kilometres diagonally to the south￾east, Liam Clancy was sitting in a Benidorm bar where he about to attack a much

more plebeian lunch: Shepherds Pie and chips, accompanied by a pint of chilled

lager. He was back in Spain for a week, tying up the ends before his move to

London, via Biarritz where he was to meet up with Kennedy. He was making the

best of the sun as London promised to be hard work with few breaks.

Almost all the customers had their eyes fixed on an extra-large TV screen at one

end of the bar. The subject of their somewhat blurry interest was an English

football league match. The airconditioned bar was a refuge from the hot midday

sun, a place where they could idle the afternoon away before preparing themselves

for an evening of more serious drinking. The accents varied from Essex Estuary to

those of Newcastle, Liverpool and Manchester. Many of the clients sported

sleeveless T-shirts displaying a variety of tattoos on their shoulders or encircling

their biceps, a good many wore heavy gold chains. They talked loudly,

gesticulating for emphasis. Their closely shaven heads glistening under the lighting

of the bar. There was a scattering of females, bottle blonds, also drinking beer,

their conversation regularly punctuated by shrieks of hysterical laughter. The beer

was cheap, it was home away from home, and better still, the weather beat that of

Romford or Wigan.

It was Clancy’s first trip to Benidorm; he did not like what he saw. He hardly

considered himself a snob, but the forest of concrete was a far cry from his former

Croke Park home in Dublin, and another universe compared to the bucolic village

landscape of Enniscorthy. Doubtlessly there money to be made in Benidorm and

judging from the way the British working class were spending their money on it

beer and cigarettes they seemed little affected by the crisis back home.

The bar was one of a small empire of bars, restaurants and discos, owned by a

Londoner, Bill Halcrow, who had made a pile in Benidorm catering for his fellow

Brits in search of sunshine and cheap beer. Clancy had run into Halcrow’s son,

Vince, by chance at a Marbella disco, who appeared as Liam was trying to help a

couple of Russian girls decipher the cocktail list. Vince insisted on offering them a

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bottle of champagne at his table and Liam didn’t need much persuading given the

price of the champagne, and the company of his newly made Russian friends, Anna

and Svetlana.

Liam was soon handing his visiting cards around, impressing his new friends with

exaggerated stories of the property market and his business as a financial

consultant in Spain. The night was long, and Liam a little worse for wear, was

talked in to accompanying Vince, just as dawn was breaking, to Benidorm…three

hundred kilometres in a taxi.

Vince had painted a glowing picture of the popular resort, to the north of

Marbella, where, according to his story, the opportunities were endless…in spite of

the crisis. Clancy was disappointed by what he saw; the Brits did not resemble

those he had met in and around Marbella. On top of that he was not impressed by

Bill Halcrow, whom he saw as an East End gangster made good.

Hurrying back to Marbella, Liam could not help feeling a little disappointed by

his visit, but the next morning, when he into the two Russian girls taking a mid￾morning coffee on the terrace of a beach front bar, it cheered him up no end.

Invited to join them, he discovered they were staying with the family of

Vyacheslav Babkin, a Russian oligarch who had made a reputation for himself on

the Costa Blanca, owner of a vast and luxurious villa beachfront villa, as guests of

his daughter Maria.

‘Come to San Sebastian with us,’ Anna said half-jokingly to the good looking

young financier. ‘You can meet Vyacheslav Babkin and Maria.’

A quick check on his iPhone and Google maps informed him San Sebastian was

not more than an hour by road from Biarritz. There was nothing to lose, it was even

an opportunity and being able to tell Kennedy he knew Babkin would certainly

stand him in good stead. Clancy took them up on the offer and the next day found

himself on a flight to San Sebastian in the very pleasant company of the two girls,

ostensibly for a tennis match.

Liam boasted of his job in the City, though he did not let on he was one of the

growing exodus of young Irish men and women following in the footsteps of those

who were forced to quit Ireland, in the search of a new future. Tens of thousands of

young men and women were leaving the Republic at an alarming rate, many under

the age of twenty five. They left for the US, the UK, Australia, Europe and just

about every other destination. Emigration was reaching a record high and Ireland

was facing both a brain drain and a demographic crisis. The spectre of emigration

was a social tragedy for a country that vaunted the skills of its educated youth.

It was a sad turn for the Celtic Tiger, not so long ago famed for its double-digit

growth. Those who thought that Ireland could survive on the remittances of its

overseas citizens as it had done in the bygone years were mistaken. Ireland was

facing a dismal future as government debt soared and unemployment surged. Real￾estate, once one of the motors of Ireland’s economy, lay trapped in a quagmire, as

hundreds of thousands of new homes lay empty for lack of buyers.

Would Disney’s version of the Emerald Isle, complete with leprechauns, horse-

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drawn caravans and folksy villages, have to be pulled out of dusty ministerial

archives to serve as a model to be relooked for the promotion of tourism? Could

Ireland rely on crisis stricken Europeans and Americans to spend their euros and

dollars? Perhaps they could count on the Chinese? Probably not. It would be a

retrograde means of stimulating growth in a world that had suddenly appeared

more vicious.

London and the world was Liam Clancy’s hope for a better future and he was

determined to seize it with both hands. His gamble on Spain looked like stalling as

its economy plunged in what was building up to be its greatest economic recession

since the Civil War. Dolores and Hugh were just about keeping their heads above

water. It was time for them, with his help from London, to shift gear and start to set

their sights on the über rich.

Spain would certainly follow the same path as that of the Greeks? Unemployment

was climbing at a startling rate to levels not previously seen in the developed world

since pre-war days. In Marbella he had heard disquieting stories of salary

reductions, tightening of budgets and desperate families. The word cortado had

become commonplace.

That did not discourage Clancy, despite the avalanche of bad news, there were

still plenty of rich about, amongst them Russians who were beginning to appear as

buyers on the Costa Blanca.