In a small bookshop near the Daugava River, hidden between a shuttered bakery and a government office painted in Soviet grays, three people gathered in the cellar as dusk crept in.
There were no passwords.
No secret knocks.
Only shared glances and the quiet acceptance that each person entering was now bound to something they might not live to see succeed.
Elza, the shop's owner, lit a lantern with steady hands.
She was older mid-forties with deep lines across her face and an even deeper stillness behind her eyes.
Across from her sat a young law student named Andris.
His fingers trembled, not from cold but from the the seriousness.
Next to him, his cousin Mareks, recently discharged from the Latvian border guard, kept his coat on and eyes sharp.
Elza laid out three folded leaflets on the table.
"They come off the same press we used for nationalist poetry two winters ago," she said softly. "Smuggled it from Jelgava before the Soviets could seize it."
Mareks picked one up.
