One morning in 1997, Frank Beke, the mayor of Ghent,
woke up to find he’d been sent a bullet in the brussels hookers post. For the next few weeks Beke wore a bulletproof jacket, while police stood guard outside his house and accompanied him everywhere he went. “I was very anxious for my family,” he says. “I was protected by police but my wife and my children weren’t.”

The culprit was...