Dr. Gennadi Volodnikov, a physicist interested in alternate dimensions, the Soviets' objective is to find a weapon more powerful than the nuclear bomb, giving them a decisive advantage in the Cold War. Sophia hires Jones to investigate what exactly the Soviets are searching for, and he travels to their dig site in the Kingdom of Iraq. There, he joins up with Sophia's boss Simon Turner and finds out that Volodnikov is looking for the Babylonian god Marduk who lives on another plane called the Aetherium. Deep in the ruins of the Etemenanki, Jones translates ancient cuneiform tablets revealing the true story behind the Tower of Babel: 2600 years ago, Nebuchadnezzar II was inspired by Marduk to build a great engine, but the frightened Babylonians tore the tower housing it down, leading four of the god's disciples to escape with some parts of this "Infernal Machine". Jones embarks on a journey to find the four machine parts before the Soviets do, and retrieves them from a monastery in the mountains of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, an active volcano on Palawan in the Philippines, an Olmec valley in Mexico, and a tomb near Meroë in the deserts of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. He is confronted by Volodnikov and Turner who both demand him to hand over the parts as they think they would not be safe with the other side. Untrusting of his fellow Americans, but opting for the lesser evil, he gives the parts to Sophia and Turner. Volodnikov says that it was probably better this way, as Marduk would have his revenge on those who desecrated the machine. Alarmed, Jones returns to the Room of the Tablets in Babylon, and finds a now-opened gate leading further into the ruins, to the core of the Infernal Machine. He catches up with Sophia and Turner, the latter of which intends to convince the other dimension to cooperate with the United States, and uses the machine parts to activate the engine. Turner pushes the unwilling Sophia into a mystical cage as a means of sending her to the Aetherium as an ambassador. Jones sees no other way but to kill him to reclaim all parts and rescue her. However, the activated machine goes awry, and Jones and Sophia are sucked into a portal that leads to the other dimension. There, he defeats the malevolent Marduk and frees Sophia from her cage. Having escaped