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To help Bush better understand the Russian mind, Rice recently gave him several books, including her favorite--Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. The President is reading it now, but whether a novel about human weakness and the power of guilt will give him any clues on how to deal with his Russian counterpart isn't clear. More than likely, Bush will rely on the same instincts that told him in Slovenia that Putin was a man he could trust. After the visit, Bush aides expect the relationship between the two to grow stronger. Rice goes to great lengths to emphasize that Bush is not basing his Russia policy on his personal chemistry with Putin. But the distinction is hard to discern. After all, the next time Bush needs to talk to his friend in the Kremlin, that once mysterious former kgb agent, he will probably call Rice into the Oval Office and, using his pet nickname for the Russian leader, say, as he has in the past, "Get me Pootie-Poot on the phone!" --With reporting by Massimo Calabresi/Washington and Paul Quinn-Judge/Moscow